BT  205  .  S67  1917 
Skrine,  John  Huntley,  1848- 
1923. 

The  survival  of  Jesus 


J. 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 

a  priest’s  study  in  divine  telepathy 


I 


THE  SURVIVAL 
OF  JESUS 


A  Priest’s  Study  in  Divine  Telepathy 


BYv/ 

JOHN  HUNTLEY  SKRINE,  D.D. 


AUTHOR  OF  “CREED  AND  THE  CREEDS”  (HAMPTON  LECTURES) 
“PASTOR  OVIUM,”  “pastor  FUTURUS,”  ETC. 


€70)  eifu  avros 
It  is  I  myself 
Quia  vivo  et  vos  vivetis 


) 


HODDER  &  STOUGHTON 
NEW  YORK 

GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


COPYRIGHT,  1917, 


BY  GEORGE  H.  DORAN  COMPANY 


PRINTED  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES  OF  AMERICA 


Su/ryuoTcus,  Xv^rjTrjrais 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/survivalofjesusp00skri_0 


CONTENTS 


BOOK  ONE :  THE  MAN  CHRIST  JESUS 

PART  I:  QUIA  VIVO 

CHAPTER  I 

PAGE 

John  Desmond’s  Quest . 17 

CHAPTER  II 

What  Is  Life? 

What  sayest  thou  that  the  Son  of  Man  is?  .  .  .  .  .  25 

An  answer.  ‘He  is  the  Life’ . 26 

What  is  Life? . 30 

In  Nature . 31 

In  the  Church . 32 

CHAPTER  III 

‘When  Ye  Shall  Hear  of  Wars’ 

The  meaning  of  war . 34 

The  Mutual  Sacrifice . 36 

Transvaluations . 37 

The  advent  of  Fact . 38 

CHAPTER  IV 

The  Real  Church 

‘The  waiting  at  the  gate  for  dreadful  news 

A  ‘world’s  earthquake’ . 41 

‘Real’  Churchmanship . 43 

The  suspense  of  faith . 46 

CHAPTER  V 

Jesus  the  Life  of  Men 

Theology  not  ‘as  usual’ . 47 

Reality  in  Theologising . 48 

vii 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Is  ‘Life’  a  real  word? . 49 

The  Manhood  or  the  Man? . 51 

A  word  of  a  saint . 52 

The  Manhood  in  the  Godhead . 53 

The  Godhead  known  through  the  Manhood  ....  55 

CHAPTER  VI 

A  New  Science 

A  counsellor . 57 

The  Four  Heresies . 59 

The  Old  in  the  New . 61 

A  hard  saying . 62 

The  hardy  can  hear  it . 62 

A  certain  new  science . 63 

New  science,  new  earth . 64 


PART  II:  THE  ATONEMENT  THROUGH  LIFE 

CHAPTER  VII 

The  Lamb  of  God 

A  Hymn  of  Hate . 67 

The  Hymn  and  the  Crucifix . 69 

What  is  Atonement? . 70 

Atonement  and  Intercession . 72 

‘Qui  tollis’ . 72 

Sin . 73 

Creation  and  Atonement . 74 

A  greater  than  the  Cross . 76 

The  process  of  the  Atonement . 78 

Birth  in  Nature  and  in  Grace . 79 

Birth  of  soul  is  as  of  body . 80 

The  Mutual  Sacrifice  in  Jesus . 82 

CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Telepathies  of  War 

A  Vision  of  Angels . 84 

Reality  in  Vision . 86 

Can  any  good  thing  come  out  of - ? . 88 


CONTENTS  ix 

CHAPTER  IX 

The  Atonement  and  Telepathy 

PAGE 

The  part  of  telepathy  in  religion . 91 

Faith-transference . 93 

An  hypothesis  of  the  process  of  Atonement . 94 

This  hypothesis  is  a  vera  causa . 95 

Telepathy  and  the  Unity  of  Man . 97 

CHAPTER  X 

The  Atoner  in  the  Days  of  His  Flesh 

‘A  little  while  I  am  with  you.’ 

i.  The  Transference  of  the  Thought  of  Jesus  .  .  .  .100 

The  Thought-reading  of  Jesus . 101 

A  parallel . 103 

The  Thought-writing  of  Jesus . 104 

ii.  The  Transference  of  the  Will  of  Jesus . 109 

The  Telepathy  of  the  Passion . 116 

Quia  vivo,  et  vos  vivetis . 117 

CHAPTER  XI 

The  Atonement  in  the  Three  Days 

*A  little  while  and  ye  shall  not  see  Me.’ 

Death . 121 

Hades  ‘the  Unseen 1 . 123 

‘Where  wast  thou,  Brother,  those  three  days?’  .  .  .  .125 

Jesus  in  Hades . 126 

Whom  did  Jesus  meet  in  Hades? . 128 

Words  from  the  Unseen . 129 

That  which  can  be  known  of  Hades . 131 

CHAPTER  XII 
Leaves  of  the  Sibyl 

Communication  in  cipher . 134 

Communication  or  Communion?  . 138 

<f}(i)vdevTa  avveroiffiv . 139 

‘Raymond,  or  Life  and  Death ’ . 141 


X 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  XIII 

The  Atonement  in  the  Forty  Days 

‘Again  a  little  while  and  ye  shall  see  Me.’ 

PAGE 

The  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection  as  taught  by  the  Risen 

Lord . 143 

What  was  it  to  ‘see  the  Lord’? . 145 

A  dogmatism  which  must  be ‘born  again’ . 147 

The  Resurrection  and  the  Eucharist . 150 

‘With  what  body’? . 153 

What  is  Body? . 153 

The  Real  Presence . 156 

The  Spirit  of  Jesus . 158 

Of  Jesus  of  Nazareth  ....  159 

PART  III:  THE  ATONEMENT  THROUGH 
LIFE  IN  ‘ALL  THE  DAYS’ 

'  I  am  with  you  all  the  days,  even  to  the  end  of  the  world.* 

CHAPTER  XIV 

y 

St.  Paul  and  the  Atonement 

How  did  Paul  ‘see  the  Lord’? . 164 

By  the  meeting  of  person  and  Person . 165 

The  psychology  of  Paul’s  Conversion . 167 

Existing  theories . 167 

Another  interpretation . 169 

The  story . 169 

Paul  saw  the  Lord  by  an  act  of  life . 172 

The  Conversion  was  worked  by  the  telepathy  of  spirit  .  175 

CHAPTER  XV 

‘These  Have  Seen  According  to  Their  Sight’ 

Three  ‘Seeings’ . 178 

To  ‘see  the  Lord’ — what  was  it  for  Paul? . 180 

What  for  Peter? . 182 

The  ‘Seeing’  of  Peter  and  Paul — the  likeness  and  the  dif¬ 
ference  . 183 

Paul’s  seeing  is  our  own . .  .  187 

A  distinction  and  its  value . 187 


CONTENTS 


xi 


CHAPTER  XVI 

On  This  Wise  Shows  He  Himself  in  All  the  Days 

PAGE 

‘Appearances’  of  Jesus . 190 

The  happening  is  an  act  of  life . 192 

Between  Spirit  and  spirit . 193 

The  Son  of  Man  become  Lord  of  All . 194 

The  God-Man  seeth  me . 194 

The  test  of  reality,  life . 197 

Life  and  joy . 198 

How  this  makes  a  difference  to  the  believer . 200 

PART  IV:  THE  DIVINE-HUMAN  JESUS 

CHAPTER  XVII 
The  Divinity  of  Jesus  Christ 

The  manner  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ . 204 

i.  In  relation  to  the  Father . 205 

ii.  In  relation  to  Man . 206 

The  infinity  of  His  Life  unto  men . 206 

That  which  can  be  known  of  the  Son  of  God  .  .  .  209 
Peace  and  joy  in  believing  that  Jesus  is  God  and  Man  210 
This  faith  in  Jesus,  the  Redeemer  by  life-giving,  has  verifi¬ 
cation  . 212 

There  is  a  science  of  the  soul . 214 

CHAPTER  XVIII 
The  Man  Atoning  Man 

Can  the  Manhood  make  Atonement? . 215 

Experience  of  life  received  must  answer . 216 

A  Christology  which  flows  from  this  conception  of  the 

Manhood . 217 

A  summing  up . 219 

Not  a  ‘Manhood’  taken  into  God,  but  a  ‘Man,’  can  be  a 

knowledge  and  a  power  on  the  soul . 220 

Is  this  faith  in  Christ  the  Man  sufficient  for  us?  .  .  .  221 
It  is  if  the  Human  Christ  is  Infinite . 222 


CONTENTS 


•  • 

Xll 

PAGE 

The  only  word  for  this  service  is  ‘  Telepathy  ’  223 

Christ  saves  us  by  the  telepathic  communication  of  the 

life  unto  God . 225 

Not  our  faith  is  here  dealt  with,  but  the  terms  of  its  con¬ 
fession  . 226 

CHAPTER  XIX 

A  Single  Believer’s  Creed . 228 

BOOK  TWO:  THE  FORECAST  OF  A 

THEOLOGY 

CHAPTER  XX 

The  Priest 

Salvation  by  life — is  it  in  word  or  in  power?  ....  235 

Will  it  interpret  priesthood? . 237 

The  pastor’s  faith-transference . 239 

‘In  sleeping’ . 241 

CHAPTER  XXI 

The  Church 

i.  Church  the  Bride . 244 

A  truer  figure . 246 

The  Presence  of  Jesus  to  disciples . 246 

ii.  Church  the  Mother . 248 

Parenthood . 248 

The  birth  of  a  Christian . 250 

Birth  by  a  ‘conversion’ . 253 

The  principle  of  Church  is  in  grace  what  telepathy  is  in 

nature . 255 

A  divine-human  telepathy . 256 

Church  is  the  life  of  a  triune  communion  ....  258 

hi.  Church  the  Body  of  Christ . 259 

And  the  Body  of  Jesus . 260 

The  member  of  Christ’s  Body . 261 

The  Ideal . 263 


CONTENTS 


•  •  • 

xm 

CHAPTER  XXII 

The  Triune  Communion  in  Secular  Life 

PAGE 

The  Triune  Communion  in  the  Nation . 266 

The  State . 266 

The  Citizen . 268 

The  Kind  . . 268 

CHAPTER  XXIII 
The  Holy  Catholic  Church 

‘Catholic7  and  ‘Living7 . 271 

The  Vincentian  canon . 272 

The  Lamp  of  Life . 274 

The  test  of  a  doctrine . 274 

The  experiment  of  Living . 276 

CHAPTER  XXIV 

‘The  Religion  of  All  Good  Men7 

Reunion . 279 

‘  The  religion  of  all  good  men 7 — what  is  it? . 280 

It  is  the  Life  unto  God . 282 

Only  on  this  can  the  Churches  re-unite . 283 

The  bond  of  union  is  not  Creed  or  Rule,  but  the  Life  in 

them . 285 

Anglican  ‘Comprehension7 . 285 

Unity  through  the  Person  of  Christ  Jesus . 286 

Jesus  the  Carpenter,  a  stumbling-block  to  some  .  .  .  287 

To  others  the  power  of  God . 288 

The  corporate  faith  and  the  personal  differ  as  Church  and 

Churchman . 289 

Union  in  the  name  of  Jesus  the  Man . 291 

CHAPTER  XXV 
The  Holy  Communion 

‘To  whom  is  the  Grail  served?7 . 292 

The  Communicatio  Idiomatum . 293 

A  translation  in  terms  of  human  experience . 294 


XIV 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

The  Vital  Interchange  interpreting  sacramental  doctrine  .  296 

‘This  is  My  Body' . 296 

The  Real  Presence . 299 

The  Holy  Board . 299 

The  Sacrifice . 299 

The  Perpetual  Sacrifice . 300 

The  Living  Sacrifice . 303 

The  Daily  Sacrifice . 304 

The  Extension  of  the  Incarnation . 305 

CHAPTER  XXVI 
The  Chair  of  Merlin 

‘The  Holy  Thing  is  here  again’ . 307 

The  Grail  and  the  Will  to  live . 309 

Venture  and  the  Vision . 310 

The  Spirit  bloweth . 311 

‘After  the  War’ . 311 

V enture  and  ‘  W  andering  Fires  ’ . 312 

The  Greatest  of  Venturers . 313 

‘Unto  whom  should  the  Grail  be  served?’ . 315 

Unto  all . 316 

i.  In  the  realm  of  the  State . 316 

An  answer  from  the  oracle  seat . 318 

ii.  In  the  Church . 319 

But  how  of  ‘them  that  are  without’? . 321 

The  Grail  seen  by  them  . . 322 

‘Whereof  is  the  Grail  served?’ . 323 

A  National  Mission  in  the  sign  of  the  Grail . 324 

The  Old  to  the  New — ‘Forward’ . 325 


BOOK  ONE 


THE  MAN  CHRIST  JESUS 

♦ 


TflE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


PART  I :  QUIA  VIVO 

CHAPTER  I 
john  Desmond’s  quest 

Am  I — I,  John  Desmond,  residentiary  Canon  of 
Dunminster,  am  I  all  the  while — Unitarian  ? 

The  disquieting  question  was  waked  in  me  last 
night  when  we  were  home  from  Hay’s  Sacred 
Cantata,  “The  Foot  of  the  Cross,”  with  which  we 
celebrated  the  Day  of  St.  Mary  Magdalene.  Mother 
came  back  very  pensive,  and  over  supper  said  a  little 
about  the  music,  which  was  good,  hut  confessed 
that  what  she  had  been  thinking  about  was  not  the 
music  hut  the  words.  I  wondered;  for  there  was 
not  much  to  notice  in  what  Robinson,  our  cathedral 
sacer  vates ,  had  composed  this  time.  He  had  been 
little  more  than  rhapsodist,  stitching  together  some 
familiar  hymns  between  the  stages  of  the  slender 
narrative.  But  she  explained.  Something  quite 
incidental  had  started  a  train  of  thought ;  it  was  the 
allusion  in  one  of  the  hymns  to  the  Passion,  “Thou 
for  me,  my  God,  hast  bled,”  and  it  carried  her  quite 

17 


i 


18 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


away  from  St.  Mary’s.  “I  was  back/’  she  said,  “in 
Stoke  Cineris  listening  to  Prebendary  Aylmer  in 
bis  pulpit  on  tbe  Divinity  of  Christ ;  and  then  I  was 
reading  again  the  manual  he  gave  me  at  Confirma¬ 
tion,  to  interpret,  he  said,  the  faith  of  Athanasius. 
‘Thou  for  me,  my  God,  hast  bled’ — sermon  and 
manual  all  came  back  into  my  head  with  that  phrase, 
and  it  made  me  sad.  For  he  was  a  true  father  in 
Christ  to  me  and  an  inspiring,  and  some  of  that  old 
inspiration  ought  to  have  come  back  on  me  at  the 
reminder,  and  it  did  not.  Why  did  it  not?  I 
suppose  what  he  taught  me  is  as  true  as  ever,  yet — 
well,  the  truth  of  it  may  be  true,  but  why  is  it  that 
it’s  not  the  truth  I  can  use  ?  Is  it  my  fault,  do  you 
think  ?” 

I  was  not  ready  with  an  answer.  Hot  because  I 
did  not  know  what  I  thought,  but  because  I  was 
afraid  to  say  it.  I  felt  so  responsible  for  saying  the 
right  thing,  just  as  if  I  were  the  grown-up  and  she 
the  young  person  and  I  must  be  tender  to  her  faith. 
That  is  natural,  I  suppose :  mother  and  son  in 
nature  may  become  sister  and  brother  in  grace  as 
time  goes  on,  and  the  son  may  grow  to  be  older 
brother,  especially  if  by  calling  he  is  an  Elder,  as  I 
am.  So  I  hesitated  to  speak,  and  when  I  spoke  did 
not  speak  out,  only  said  Prebendary  Aylmer  was 
of  one  generation  and  we  of  another,  and  every  age 
must  be  its  own  theologian  and  find  its  own  new 
language  for  the  old  truth.  But  I  felt  a  little 
ashamed  of  myself,  as  if  I  had  dissembled,  which  I 


JOHN  DESMOND’S  QUEST 


19 


should  hate  to  do  with  her.  It  was  not  so  really: 
I  was  only  reserving  my  answer  to  make  it  a  better 
one  after  reflection.  And  I  have  reflected. 

“Thou  for  me,  my  God,  hast  bled.’7  How  can  one 
say  it  and  mean  it  ?  Oh  no  doubt  it  is  logical  enough 
if  Jesus  is  God,  then  God  bled  on  the  cross.  But 
this  “Jesus  is  God/7  can  one  say  that  and  mean 
it?  We  clergy  are  always  saying  it  in  the  church 
and  the  school  and,  when  there  is  a  new  heretic  to 
be  put  down,  in  the  Church  papers.  We  say  it: 
and  we  mean  by  it — what  ? 

Ask  Jones  of  Pearstead,  though  any  one  else 
would  do,  and  he  tells  you  that  by  the  Incarnation 
the  divine  and  human  nature  were  united  in  the 
person  of  Jesus.  That  is  no  meaning.  For  tell 
me  what  “nature77  is,  and  what  “person,77  and  what 
“united77  is.  Jones  cannot  do  it;  no,  nor  a  wiser 
than  Jones.  These  are  words  not  things. 

Ask  Balthazar  Daniels  of  the  Primitive  Methodist 
chapel,  and  he  tells  you  he  is  content  to  know 
that  Jesus  revealed  to  us  the  Father  and  said  He 
was  the  Father’s  Son.  He  takes  Christ’s  word  for 
it  that  Christ  is  God.  This  is  a  little  more  meaning, 
hut  not  much  more.  For  tell  me  what  it  is  to 
“reveal,77  tell  me  what  it  is  to  he  “son”  to  God. 
Here  are  words  still,  not  quite  so  spectral  as  Jones’s, 
but  they  slip  away  as  easily  when  you  try  to  grasp 
them. 

Call  up  Athanasius  even  and  let  him  tell  you 
that  the  Son  is  “of  one  substance”  with  the  Father. 


20 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Not  even  Athanasius,  when  he  had  first  corrected 
onr  blundering  “substance”  into  “essence,”  would 
leave  you  satisfied  with  his  great  word,  though 
he  refounded  on  it  the  very  Church.  To  he  “of 
one  essence,”  what  is  that?  And  if  there  be  a 
Son  of  God,  and  that  Son  be  “of  one  essence,”  yet 
how  is  Jesus  of  Nazareth  this  Son?  You  can  echo 
Athanasius  and  gainsay  Arius:  what  you  cannot 
do  is  to  make  the  word  of  either  of  them  into  an 
image  of  fact  that  your  mind  can  see  before  it,  as 
you  must  see  the  things  in  which  you  believe. 

Yet  what  are  creeds  for  if  not  for  this,  to  make 
images  of  the  truth  which  the  mind  can  see?  It  is 
the  mind  not  the  soul  that  wants  a  creed  to  help  its 
faith. 

See  then  what  I  seem  to  be  doing.  I  am  giving 
away  the  Trinitarian  theology  as  a  thing  of  no 
meaning.  If  my  old  adversary,  Slagg  of  Blaston- 
bury,  whom  Mark  used  to  call  the  Hammer  of 
Heretics  (Malleus,  mallet,  the  wooden-headed,  he  pre¬ 
ferred),  were  still  here  and  could  read  the  thoughts 
which  I  have  not  written  yet.  but  may  come  to  write, 
how  would  he  protest  that  his  heresy-hunt  was 
justified  at  last.  “See  how  right  I  was!  Your 
young  freethinker  whom,  when  he  ought  to  have 
resigned,  you  defended  and  passed  on  to  Dunminster, 
look,  he  is  turned  stark,  staring  Unitarian.  Will 
you  retain  him  in  the  canonry  now  ?” 

And  if  they  would  not — !  It  would  be  this — 


JOHN  DESMOND’S  QUEST  21 

the  uprootal  again  of  this  dear  mother  from  a  new 
home  so  dear,  so  blessedly  found  for  her  as  a  refuge 
for  her  widowhood — this  mossy  Cathedral  Close, 
our  grey-gabled  house  and  mellow  garden,  St. 
Mary’s  beauty  and  all-congenial  worships,  friends 
like  minded  round  her,  all  these  comforts  vivified 
by  the  new  life  that  has  sprung  for  her,  when  the 
old  fell  away,  through  her  son’s  new  beginning.  If 
this  home  were  to  know  her  no  more ! 

And  another  yet  more  miserable  “if.”  She  would 
follow  me  out  from  the  home:  she  would  follow  me 
in  the  worldly  fortune;  would  she,  could  she  follow 
me  in  the  spiritual  ?  Can  a  man,  a  woman,  be  born 
again  when  she  is  old?  Pray  God  she  can:  else 
how  shall  the  Elect  Lady,  our  mother  church,  know 
that  birth-again  which  must  age  by  age  keep  her 
in  the  Kingdom  of  God  when  she  is  old  ? 

A  man  who  will  be  disciple  must  forsake  parent 
and  kin,  if  the  Quest  calls  and  he  hears  it  and  not 
they.  But  that  this  should  happen  to  me  and  her, 
it  shall  not  be  thought. 

I  am  ashamed  of  harbouring  such  a  fear.  It  is 
making  far  too  much  of  myself  to  fancy  these 
heroics  for  my  case.  Suppose  I  should  end  this 
chapter  of  the  Quest  as  a  non-Trinitarian,  what 
then?  Are  there  really  any  Trinitarians  anywhere 
in  the  world,  Trinitarian  in  anything  more  than 
name?  Can  there  be  one  until  there  is  some  one 
who  knows  what  a  “Person”  is,  and,  if  he  does, 
then  how  Three  Persons  can  be  One  God,  and  what 


22 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


it  is  to  be  One  f  Even  if  we  should  find  a  man  who 
knows  these  things,  still  we  should  have  to  ask  him 
how  these  things  matter  to  us,  how  the  knowledge 
of  them  can  alter  the  fate  here  and  hereafter  of  this 
living,  conscious  being,  a,  man  who  does  not  know 
at  all  what  a  “Person”  really  is,  but  is  quite  sure 
that  he  himself  is  one. 

Yes,  before  the  Church  condemns  a  member  for 
contradicting  her  doctrine,  she  must  know  what  her 
doctrine  is.  The  model  of  the  Faith  must  have  a 
plain,  visible  shape  if  you  are  to  denounce  a  copy 
as  shaped  wrongly.  Am  I  saying  then  the  Church 
does  not  know  the  shape  of  her  belief?  dSTo,  the 
Church  knows,  but  churchmen — if  any,  how  few ! 

But  then  it  is  not  these  Few  who  will  be  asked  to 
judge  in  a  heresy-suit.  And  it  is  hardly  wonder, 
because  the  Many  would  not  be  able  to  understand 
them  if  they  tried  to  explain  their  judgment.  The 
painter  cannot  expound  his  colouring:  one  either 
sees  it  is  right  as  he  sees  it,  or  does  not  see.  And 
the  belief  in  Christ  is  a  more  subtle  and  incommuni¬ 
cable  experience  than  is  the  understanding  of  a 
Turner  landscape.  So  the  Church  calls  in  an  expert 
in  logic  or  history,  which  is  a  little  like  asking  in 
the  artist’s  colourman  who  sold  the  paints  which 
Turner  mixed  and  laid  on.  Sometimes  too  this 
“expert”  is  not  “expert”  by  training  and  profession 
but  by  the  accident  of  an  office  of  administration. 
That  would  be  a  little  like  calling  in  not  the  colour- 
man  but  his  partner  who  manages  the  business. 


JOHN  DESMOND’S  QUEST 


23 


Well,  wisely  or  unwisely,  a  church  must  judge  of 

a  teacher’s  doctrine  whether  it  be  hers,  or  not  hers 

and  needing  to  be  inhibited;  and  since  she  must 

judge,  she  may  judge  him  to  have  broken  communion. 

Towards  that  danger  a  teacher  will  move,  if  the  mind 

of  him  goes  on  moving,  if  he  goes  on  the 

TT  1  &  T  T  On  Quest. 

Holy  Quest  at  all.  And  here  go  1,  since  1 
must  not  love  even  a  mother  more  than  TIim. 

Yet  after  all  what  is  the  danger?  Only  the  dan¬ 
ger  which  there  is  in  living  at  all.  What  is  more 
precarious  than  life,  mere  body’s  life.  How  narrow  a 
miss  of  right  adjustment  to  nature  can  hurl  us  out 
of  existence — a  slip,  a  shock,  a  drop  of  poison,  a 
plague  germ.  Verily  we  “stand  in  jeopardy  every 
hour”  with  our  bodies.  But  the  adjustments  which 
keep  safe  the  mind  are  also  nice,  a  stumble  may 
overthrow  us.  And  as  between  Church  and  member 
there  is  a  double  chance  of  stumble;  if  either  miss 
the  truth,  the  life  between  the  two  may  break. 

Yes,  but  as  somehow  the  will  to  live  does  keep  my 
body  safe  in  a  million  momently  occasions  of  death, 
so  the  will  to  live  more  and  longer,  this  keeps  my 
soul  and  my  church’s  soul.  We  shall  not  die  but 
live  through  going  on  the  Quest.  “Thy  faith  hath 
saved  thee,”  said  the  Healer  to  the  healed  in  body. 
He  says  it  even  to  the  soul,  “Thy  faith  hath  saved 
herself.”  To  the  soul,  and  also  to  the  Church,  “Your 
faith  shall  save  you  twain.”  But  it  must  be  she 
and  I  who  go  on  the  Quest  both  together;  and  how 
know  I  that  She  will  go,  or  will  go  there  with  me, 


24 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


and  go  in  time  for  faith  to  save  herself,  that  mutual 
faith  both  of  her  and  me?  It  is  not  always  so;  it 
was  not  so  in  Jerusalem  that  slew  the  prophets  and 
after  built  their  sepulchres.  Yet  Jerusalem  was  the 
Church  of  God. 

However  on  the  Quest  I  go. 


CHAPTER  II 


WHAT  IS  LIFE? 

Jones  was  here  to  tea  last  week,  nominally  on  some 

business  with  the  Registrar  before  he  goes  off  on 

his  holiday  on  the  Continent  (if  he  is  wise  in  going 

there  while  things  are  so  unsettled),  but  really  I 

think  to  draw  me  about  Donaldson’s  pamphlet  on  the 

Resurrection.  I  was  not  drawn,  because  to  what 

my  great  convenience  I  have  not  read  the  sayest 
J  &  ....  thou? 

paper  yet,  and  so  could  leave  the  criticising 

all  to  Jones.  He  told  me  he  and  his  parishioners 
would  say  the  writer  has  “taken  away  our  Christ.” 
That  is  only  too  possible,  if  it  is  “our”  Christ  whom 
we  lose  through  Donaldson.  And  the  case  is  very  ill, 
unless  “our”  Christ  is  being  replaced  by  the  Christ. 

I  hope  J ones  did  not  think  me  rude,  but  my  atten¬ 
tion  strayed  from  him  for  a  moment  over  that  “our 
Christ.”  I  was  saying  to  myself,  “You  must  lose 
no  time :  you  soon  will  have  to  tell  a  questioner  who 
your  Christ  is,  and  you  are  not  ready  to  do  it.  There 
must  be  no  tarrying  in  this  search.” 

Well,  he  is  gone,  and  has  left  me  in  company  with 
One  who  is  asking,  “Who  say’st  thou  that  I  am, 
thou  ?” 


25 


26 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


But  I  can  say  it,  for  I  know.  I  do  not  say  with 
Peter,  if  indeed  he  did  say  it  all,  “Thou  art  the 
Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God/’  not  because  I  do 
not  think  it,  but  because,  though  I  can  think,  I 
cannot  know  it.  For  to  know  it  I  should  need  to 
understand  what  God  is,  and  what  a  Son  of  Him 
can  be.  And  if  I  did  understand  this,  still  I  could 
not  with  a  sense  of  reality  say  it  to  any  one  else, 
unless  his  understanding  were  the  same  as  my  own. 
We  should  be  interchanging  words,  not  images  which 
the  mind  can  see;  we  should  be  agreeing,  not  to 
have  the  same  idea  of  one  same  fact  but  to  have 
one  name  for  what  might  as  probably  be  two  facts 
as  one.  True,  that  is  what  we  have  all  been  doing 
always  in  our  conferences  concerning  the  faith,  we 
have  said  the  same  thing,  not  meant  it:  but  I  must 
try  to  do  better  now,  if  I  can,  and  to  mean  some¬ 
thing  in  speech  on  religion,  not  only  say  some¬ 
thing. 

But  if  I  cannot  speak  with  the  Disciple,  with  the 
An  Master  I  can  speak  and  will.  He  said,  “I  am 
Answer,  ^he  Life.”  And  to  His  “Whom  thinkest 
thou  ?”  I  make  answer,  “Thou  art  the  Life,  Life  from 
the  living  God,  the  Life  of  man,  my  Life  who  answer 
Thee.” 

How  do  I  know  it? 

In  the  way  we  know  all  the  things  which  matter 
very  greatly.  Intuition,  I  should  have  to  call  it, 
if  I  were  talking  to  any  one  else.  But  Intuition 
means,  by  etymology,  “looking  into  things,”  and 


WHAT  IS  LIFE? 


n 


I  want  a  word  which  shall  mean  much  more  than 
looking,  it  must  mean  for  me  seeing,  hearing,  touch¬ 
ing,  all  at  once.  I  want  the  word  which  shall  de¬ 
scribe  a  knowledge  we  have  that  a  thing  is  there, 
though  neither  eye,  ear,  nor  hand  can  tell  you  so; 
a  sense  like  that  touch  at  distance  enjoyed  by  some 
eyeless  molluscs,  or  like  what  I  have  noted  in  blind 
folk  who  can  steer  round  you  in  a  corridor  however 
still  you  stand,  because  somehow  you  obstruct  space 
and  they  feel  the  air  thicken  before  them.  A  sense 
(might  one  call  it?)  of  the  objective,  an  awareness 
of  a  presence  only  because  it  is  present,  because  I 
am  here  and  It  is  there.  (Can  this  be  the  account 
of  haunted  houses  where  you  never  see  the  ghost, 
but  if  you  are  alone  there  is  Someone  there  too? 
I  expect  this  will  prove  to  be  the  fact  before  long.) 
I  should  imagine  this  is  wliat  Bergson  is  after  when 
he  contrasts  Intuition  with  Intellect  ?  If  I  misun¬ 
derstand  him  here  it  is  from  my  own  point  of 
view  not  a  dishonouring  misunderstanding,  and  I 
gratefully  borrow  the  word  from  him  with  this  mean¬ 
ing  on  it,  till  a  better  can  be  found,  as  I  hope  it 
will  be  found.  Yes,  Christ  is  the  Life;  I  know  it  by 
Intuition. 

But  the  intuition  was  not  a  sudden  one.  Why 
should  it  be  sudden,  any  more  than  a  conversion? 
(Are  they  perhaps  the  same  thing?)  I  know  the 
history  of  my  own  intuition.  It  began  with  the 
word  “life”  on  the  lips  of  an  early  teacher  of  mine, 
a  word  always  on  his  lips,  when  he  spoke  of  anything 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


38 

which  for  him  had  any  reality.  What  it  meant  I 
could  not  have  told  myself,  not  in  those  days. 
Could  he  have  told  himself?  He  never  told  me 
or  any  one  else  but  himself.  We  got  his  meaning, 
though,  or  much  of  it,  for  we  got  from  him  the 
passion  which  breathed  itself  in  the  word,  inarticu¬ 
late  but  strong,  like  the  vague  voice  of  the  river 
when  the  thunder  of  the  fall  utters  the  volume  and 
the  motion  of  the  flood.  It  was  this  passion  for 
Reality  that  passed  to  us  in  the  word,  and  did  not 
pass  away  from  us  with  the  sound,  but  hung  in  the 
mind,  a  passion  now  of  our  own,  to  grow  some 
day  into  a  thought  and  be  not  the  less  a  passion 
but  all  the  more.  For  a  thought  it  is  at  last  for 
me. 

Hot  my  own  thought,  however,  except  in  part. 
Any  one  else  would  have  to  say  it  was  not  mine  at 
all,  hut  cousin  Mark’s.  Certainly  it  is  his  by  law 
of  copyright  :  he  gave  it  words  before  we  had  been 
much  together.  But  I  noticed  that  no  one  else 
seemed  to  understand  him,  when  he  expressed  it, 
and  I  did;  which  could  not  have  happened  without 
my  doing  something  to  make  it  happen,  that  is  with¬ 
out  my  understanding  him.  But  if  we  learn  best 
by  teaching  another  and  reach  truth  by  the  encounter 
of  mind  and  mind,  I  am  sure  Mark  will  not  disallow 
me  some  modest  share  in  his  own  understanding  of 
himself. 

But  this  talk  about  copyright  and  origination — 
how  idle  it  is,  if  not  unworthy.  The  matter  is  too 


WHAT  IS  LIFE? 


£9 


serious.  What  did  the  prophets  and  gospellers  and 
even  the  apocalyptists  trouble  about  their  publica¬ 
tion  rights,  and  what  does  it  matter  how  came  my 
intuition  that  Jesus  was  the  Life,  if  the  intuition 
came?  It  did  come;  among  my  teachers  it  came 
from  those  two,  hut  I  possessed  it  only  by  help  of 
another  beside  them;  and  this  was  Nature.  Once 
the  vague  unfeatured  word,  Life,  was  lodged  in  my 
mind,  I  began  to  look  abroad  on  the  field  and  flood 
and  woodland  to  see  what  Life  is  like  when  it  is 
lived  in  these  places.  That  is  where  my  first 
teacher  had  looked.  How  I  remember  his  pointing 
at  a  tree  trunk,  and  saying,  gripping  my  arm  to  say 
it  stronger,  “There,  see  that  tree:  it  looks  as  still 
as  a  stone,  and  all  the  while  there’s  life  racing  up 
it  at  no  end  of  a  pace!”  Life  racing  up  it.  Yes, 
he  had  got  the  knowledge  that  life  can  race,  but  not 
yet  what  life  is  in  itself,  or  even  how  it  is  able  to 
race. 

I  went  to  the  naturalists  in  this  branch,  and  they 
told  me  “life  is  the  response  of  an  organism  to  an 
environment.”  When  they  had  earlier  told  my 
teacher  this,  he  was  most  angry  with  them:  thought 
it  materialism  and  denial  of  God ;  and  he  denounced 
their  ignorance,  and,  as  often  with  him,  not  in  spar¬ 
ing  language.  He  seemed  to  me  wrong  at  that  time, 
and  so  he  was.  But  now  I  see  he  was  also  right, 
though  he  did  not  know  why  himself,  and  I  have 
only  come  of  late  to  know  why.  But  now  I  do  know. 
Their  theory  implied  that  the  environment  was 


30 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


there  before  the  responsive  organism;  so  Nature, 
brute  Nature,  had  created  the  creature  to  respond 
to  herself:  dead  Matter  had  been  mother  to  a  liv¬ 
ing  child!  Where  in  this,  they  asked,  was  God  the 
Creator?  Away  with  such  villain  theory  from  the 
earth,  one  answers  them,  for  it  is  not  right  that  such 
an  one  should  live  between  the  lips  of  men,  of 
Christian  men! 

Then  it  broke  on  me — the  vision  of  Life ! 

Life.  They  were  wrong,  these  naturalists,  because 
they  had  seen  half  the  fact;  and  this  half  without 
the  other  half  is  not  the  “more  than  the  whole7’  of 
the  Greek  proverb,  but  something  incalculably  short 
of  even  half  the  truth.  The  truth  is  that  organism 
and  environment  are  there  together,  neither  is  before 
or  after  the  other.  There  is  nothing  in  the  world, 
if  only  one  of  the  two  he  there.  They  create  one 
the  other,  and  so  create  the  world.  This  is  what 
life  is, — organism  and  environment,  creature  and 
creation,  each  crying  “Let  there  be”  to  each. 

That  may  sound  like  some  empty  shape  of  logic, 
a  fleshless,  bloodless  abstraction,  a  spectral  atomy  of 
metaphysics.  No,  it  came  in  no  such  form  to  me. 
I  could  watch  this  creation  happening.  I  saw 
almost  with  my  eyes,  and  more  convincingly  than 
with  them,  the  earth  and  her  living  thing  make,  one 
with  other,  the  two.  I  saw  the  leaf  on  the  tree  at 
touch  of  the  sunlight  live  by  the  chemic  transfer¬ 
ence  of  airy  substances  from  itself  to  the  atmosphere 
and  back  again;  and  the  tree-roots  borrow  from  the 


WHAT  IS  LIFE? 


31 


soil  in  spring  to  repay  it  in  autnmn  witli  the  mould¬ 
ering  leafage;  and  the  nuptials  of  the  flower,  where 
the  pollen-stirring  bee  unites  the  bridegroom  anther 
and  a  floral  bride.  Then  I  felt  in  my  own  frame 
of  flesh  the  intercourse  of  my  breath  with  nature’s 
breath  of  life,  the  to  and  fro  of  the  blood,  the  ani¬ 
mation  of  nerve  and  muscle  by  the  exercise  that 
spends  their  force  to  store  up  more.  I  read  the 
same  law  writ  large  in  the  vast  organism  of  a 
nation’s  frame  maintaining  its  vigour  in  war  or 
peace  by  the  mutual  sacrifice  of  state  and  citizen, 
the  mother  and  the  son.  And  then  I  lifted  Life  of  the 
my  eyes  and  saw  the  vision  of  the  Church,  Church* 
the  Living  Creature  nearest  of  things  visible  to  the 
throne;  and  behold,  the  life  of  this  was  as  the  life 
of  myself  and  the  grass  of  the  field;  it  too  was  an 
interchange  of  self  between  Whole  and  Part,  Body 
of  Christ  and  Member,  a  Mother  unsparing  of 
herself  to  cherish  her  children,  sons  counting  not 
their  life  dear  unto  themselves  so  they  may  work 
the  mother’s  will.  From  the  life  which  creeps  on 
low  earth  up  to  the  life  which  climbs  nearest  towards 
heaven  there  is  one  law  of  being,  and  its  name  is 
the  Interchange  of  Self,  the  Mutual  Sacrifice  of  Two. 
Then  this  must  be  the  secret  of  how  my  soul  has 
life.  Of  the  Two  between  whom  that  life  is  made 
She  is  the  One,  the  Creature;  and  she  lives  by  the 
surrender  of  herself  to  that  Other,  who  said,  “Let 
there  be  this  man,  to  stand  before  my  face,  other 
than  Myself  yet  in  my  likeness,  to  be  apart  from 


32 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Me  and  yet  in  commune,  to  abide  in  Me  as  I  in  him, 
till  his  thoughts  become  as  my  thoughts  and  his  ways 
my  ways,  and  the  love  whereby  I  kindle  all  that  is, 
and  without  which  nothing  is  made  that  is  made,  this 
love  beat  from  this  one  heart  back  on  Mine.” 

Once  I  spoke  in  this  way  to  mother.  She  said, 
aOf  course,  John,  I  do  not  understand  philosophy: 
but  when  you  say  that  we  live  by  our  soul  being 
there,  apart  from  God  as  it  were,  and  answering 
to  Him,  you  sound  as  if  you  were  contradicting  what 
we  mean  by  God  being  Creator.  I  thought  that 
meant  that  He  made  everything  out  of  nothing:  but 
you  say  our  soul  must  be  there  over  against  God 
An  before  it  can  live.  How  could  Adam  be 
antinomy  there  before  God  made  him?”  I  told  her 
that  she  was  philosophising  very  well  and 
asking  me  just  the  right  question,  and  that  I  could 
not  answer  it.  But  neither  could  wiser  people  than 
I  answer  it.  This  is  a  thing  which  no  one  can  know, 
how  the  world  or  anything  in  the  world  began. 
Once  a  thing  is  alive,  however,  we  can  in  some  de¬ 
gree  see  how  it  lives,  and  what  I  see  is  that  a  living 
creature  goes  on  living  only  by  this  giving  up  of 
itself  to  the  world  round  it  and  by  receiving  the 
world  into  itself.  If  that  is  how  it  lives  now,  that 
must  have  been  how  it  lived  in  its  first  moment  of 
all,  or  at  least  that  is  all  we  men  can  at  present  know 
of  how  it  began  to  live.  But  how  it  came  to  be  there 
so  as  to  have  a  first  moment,  that  is  what  passes 
my  own  wit,  and  I  can’t  learn  about  it  from  any 


WHAT  IS  LIFE? 


33 


one  else.  Still  I  believe  that  the  same  is  the  case 
when  the  living  creature  is  a  soul.  It  lives  every 
moment  of  its  present  existence  hy  what  I  call  the 
Mutual  Sacrifice,  and  therefore  it  must  have  lived 
by  this  at  the  first  moment.  I  cannot  tell  how  Adam 
could  be  there  before  the  first  moment  when  God 
lifted  up  from  the  dust  of  the  ground  what  was  now 
as  He  lifted  it  no  longer  dust  but  spirit  ;  and  I  do 
not  think  we  shall  ever  know  this  as  long  as  our 
“soul  cleaveth  to  the  dust”  of  earth  that  makes  our 
mortal  body.  aBut,  mother,”  I  said,  and  I  remem¬ 
ber  what  a  heave  of  the  heart  I  felt,  “if  what  I  am 
thinking  is  true,  then  I  have  all  the  truth  I  need, 
while  I  am  here  in  the  dust.  All  our  faith  in  God 
and  in  Christ  too,  all  can  come  out  of  this.  I  can¬ 
not  tell  you  yet  what  I  mean,  but  I  will  try  to  tell 
you  when  I  know  it  myself.  I  am  sure  of  it  already, 
quite  sure.  This  is  our  Christian  faith,  all  we  know 
of  Christ,  in  a  word, — Sacrifice,  the  Mutual  Sacri¬ 
fice.”  She  looked  at  me  a  moment,  kindling  herself, 
and  then,  aGod  speed  you,  my  son,”  she  murmured : 
and  we  have  not  come  on  it  again. 

God  has  sped  me  somewhat,  and  will  speed  me 
more,  I  think.  It  is  not  a  little  thing  that  has  come  to 
me — this,  that  Life  is  the  name  of  the  world-secret,  of 
all  that  can  as  yet  be  known  by  men  of  what  God  and 
Man  is,  and  that  the  deeper  name  of  Life  is  Sacrifice, 
Mutual  Sacrifice.  If  it  is  true,  then  in  the  light  of  it 
we  shall  reword  our  theologies.  Only  that?  Ho,  in 
the  power  of  it  we  shall  renerve  our  creed. 


CHAPTER  III 


“when  ye  shall  hear  of  waks” 

The  Mutual  Sacrifice !  This  is  strange  that  happens 
to  me  at  the  outset  of  the  Quest.  I  had  written 
those  words  just  now,  had  put  up  my  writing  and 
come  in  from  the  garden  nook  which  is  my  study 
most  seasons  of  the  year,  and  at  the  garden  door 
met  mother,  the  newspaper  in  her  hand.  She 
reached  it  me  with  the  look  I  saw  in  her  when  my 
father  took  to  his  bed  never  to  rise  from  it.  It  was 
the  news  of  war,  war  for  England  along  with  all 
Europe. 

The  Sacrifice !  That  was  the  word  that  wrote 

meaning  itself  in  a  phantom  lettering,  in  a  scrawl 
as  of  far  lightning  across  a  cloud,  along  the 
columns  that  told  of  mobilisation  orders,  ambassa¬ 
dors  taking  flight  for  home,  rumours  creeping  from 
under  the  fog  of  war  to  whisper  that  German  fore¬ 
posts  are  stealing  across  a  frontier,  Ministers  of 
State  coming  out  from  council  doors  haggard  and 
dumb,  reservists  called  away  to  ship  and  regiment, 
every  name  of  the  thousands  a  smothered  tragedy  of 
a  home.  Sacrifice.  Aye,  and  a  holocaust  of  lives. 
And  on  what  altar?  Eor  France  this  time  at  least 


34 


“WHEN  YE  SHALL  HEAR  OF  WARS”  35 


it  is  on  the  pure  altar  of  La  Patrie,  a  divine-human 
Power:  for  German  peasant  in  the  ranks  a  sacrifice 
to  the  same  high  potency  of  Fatherland;  but  for 
those  who  send  that  good-hearted  gallant  fellow  to 
his  grave  under  a  French  or  Russian  sod — for 
these,  for  Kaiser  and  Junker  and  fire-eating,  blood- 
drinking,  murder-bleating  professor,  and  the  evil 
spirit  of  Bismarck  stalking  there  in  the  midst  of 
them — it  is  an  abhorred  sacrifice  to  Moloch,  sons 
of  the  land  passed  through  the  fire  unto  Him,  yes, 
only  Him.  (O  disastrous  pedantry  of  our  English 
pacifists,  who  could  not  see  this  Germany  through 
the  fume  of  their  philanthropies,  and  scolded  us 
who  did  see  and  warned  them  while  there  was  time 
in  vain.)  Well,  a  sacrifice  there  is  abroad  both  to 
a  holy  and  to  an  unholy  cause.  For  us  in  England 
what  sacrifice  and  on  what  altar?  Assuredly  not 
of  a  Moloch.  As  surely  on  the  altar  of  a  cause  pure 
as  theirs,  who  fight  and  die  for  the  people,  that  a 
whole  nation  perish  not;  but  of  even  a  holier  cause, 
the  work  that  the  God  of  Hosts  has  given  England 
to  work  for  Him  in  earth’s  four  quarters, — and  who 
shall  work  that  will  of  Him,  if  in  this  battle  England 
should  be  broken?  Which  as  the  Lord  liveth  will 
not  be. 

But  what  have  I  to  do  here  with  the  causes  high 
or  base  of  the  other  peoples  whom  the  Prince  of 
this  world,  pitching  his  headquarters  at  this  season 
in  central  Europe,  has  bidden  to  the  sacrifice  of  a 
million  lives,  and  of  homes  by  the  scores  of  millions. 


36 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Ours,  England’s  sacrifice,  is  the  one  matter  an  Eng¬ 
lishman  must  press  to  heart  and  mind  to-day.  And 
is  it  not  strange  that  this  thunder-clap  of  doom  breaks 
upon  my  ear  while  the  ink  is  drying  in  which  I  wrote 
that  Sacrifice  is  the  name  of  Life? 

The  A  thunder-clap ;  and  “the  thunder  is  still 

Mutual  His  voice.”  For  it  is  the  Mutual  Sacrifice 
which  the  voice  out  of  the  storm-cloud  has 
bruited  abroad  for  us.  England  and  the  great  Whole 
for  which  she  is  the  older  name,  must  now  strive 
for  life,  and  like  all  things  that  have  life,  she  must 
keep  it  by  a  mutual  sacrifice  of  the  mother  and  the 
sons.  If  Christ  he  the  Life,  and  life  is  the  giving  of 
a  self  to  a  self,  then  this  is  the  Christ-following  for 
an  Englishman  to-day.  This,  0  Christian  and  dear 
and  doited  criers  of  peace  where  there  was  no  peace, 
this  is  the  Christianity  required  from  you  and  me, 
this  is  our  act  of  faith  for  the  wild  hour  fallen  on 
the  blind  and  the  seeing  alike.  There  has  happened 
to  our  race  that  which  happened  to  the  barbarian 
tribesmen  in  our  forests  who  knew  not  the  Christ, 
and  to  whom  their  duty  to  the  Tribe  was  all  the  duty 
they  owned  to  heaven,  was  the  worship  due  to  the 
divinity  most  near  at  hand,  the  home  that  bare  them. 
For  us  to-day  the  home  of  our  race  has  become  the 
Divine  Thing  nearest  at  hand :  as  parent  is  to  child, 
so  Country  to  her  sons  in  a  righteous  war  is,  I  will 
dare  say  it,  is  as  God.  When  they  love  not  their 
lives  unto  the  death,  so  they  may  save  or  help  her, 
they  take  up  the  cross  and  follow  Jesus,  they  are 


“WHEN  YE  SHALL  HEAR  OF  WARS”  37 


filling  up  that  which  remains  over  of  the  sufferings 
of  Christ. 

But  if  this  is  Christianity,  is  it  also  Churchman- 
ship  ? 

If  it  be  not,  I  will  be  churchman  no  longer. 

Christ’s  Name!  how  pitiful  under  the  Trans- 
black  cloud  uprisen,  and  the  lightning-sword  valuations- 
playing  across  it,  look  the  causes  my  brother  clerics 
have  up  to  the  verge  of  this  world-quarrel  been 
maintaining  with  so  solemn  strenuousness !  Can  this 
lady  of  my  congregation  come  to  a  eucharist  in  a 
truly  dutiful  mind  of  communion  if  a  crumb  or  a 
sup  have  passed  her  lips  already  ?  On  the  Sunday 
before  a  battle  next  month  may  an  army  chaplain 
give  the  bread  and  wine  of  life  to  a  lad  from  a 
Methodist  home  who  has  never  kneeled  under  the 
hands  of  a  bishop?  If  that  other  army  chaplain 
has  preached  a  sermon,  declaring  his  belief  that  the 
Body  of  Jesus  seen  in  the  Upper  Room  was  not 
the  same  flesh  and  bone  as  Joseph  laid  in  his  vault, 
ought  an  Archbishop  to  close  the  preacher’s  lips 
till  he  grows  more  wise  ?  I  try  to  ask  these  ques¬ 
tions  with  an  open  mind  as  to  the  right  answers,  or 
with  as  open  a  mind  as  patience  can  put  on  when 
she  looks  at  such  matters  in  such  a  time  as  this, — 
for  what  the  right  answers  are  one  cannot  much 
care  for  just  now.  I  ask  them  only  to  put  our 
churchmanly  solicitudes  under  the  fierce  light  beat¬ 
ing  down  from  this  awful  sky,  that  whatever  in  our 
thoughts  is  unreal  or  of  a  paltry  realness,  may  be 


38 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


scorched  and  shrivelled  and  shred  away,  and  leave 
behind  the  knowledge  of  things  that  can  be  known, 
and  the  articles  of  a  belief  that  is  able  to  save  our 
soul. 

Knowledge  that  is  knowledge  of  fact,  belief  that 
is  an  act  of  the  soul  or  an  act  upon  the  soul — these 
are  what  our  theology  and  our  religion  want.  “Real 
Churchmanship,”  we  called  it  in  our  student  brother¬ 
hood  of  those  early  days  of  Carleford.1  The  word 
was  glory  in  our  young  blood ;  vainglory  of  youngsters 
no  doubt,  in  some  part;  hut  a  sound  glory  too. 
What  has  come  of  it,  beyond  what  the  dream  may 
have  done  in  its  hour  for  a  half  dozen  of  us  neo¬ 
phytes  at  the  Chantry? 

Something  is  coming  of  it  now.  Reality 
ofhFacLentis  with  us  of  England  in  the  months  which 
begin  their  iron  march  from  this  morning. 
Look  at  our  garden  here,  those  rich  sheets  of  bloom 
under  the  cultured  box-hedges,  this  faultless  ancient 
lawn  and  the  seductive  rose-hung  alley  yonder  into 
which  it  wanders  away.  It  is  Anglicanism,  that 
“English  home”  of  the  faithful  and  “haunt  of  an¬ 
cient  peace.”  What  would  our  garden  be,  if  Dun- 
minster  Street  were  to  be  a  bullet-pitted  Podoll,  as 
my  father  saw  it  when  Prussia  had  been  through  it 
in  7  6  6,  and  if  half  a  battery  of  15  pounders  scram¬ 
bled  across  our  parterres  to  murder  a  regiment  out 
on  the  hill  over  there  ?  Well,  it  would  be  not  unlike 
our  prim,  formal,  demure,  ancient-modish,  high-cul- 
1  Pastor  Futurus,  C.  xvi. 


“WHEN  YE  SHALL  HEAR  OF  WARS”  39 


tured  churchiness,  when  into  that  close  garden  of  the 
soul  strides  and  stamps  the  savage  vasty  reality — 
War,  whose  other  names  are  Greed,  and  Hate,  and 
Fury:  and  Sin,  Lust,  and  Madness;  Famine,  Pes¬ 
tilence,  and  the  Death  of  men.  Our  sweet  paradise 
in  the  Close  is  for  pleasuring,  lazing,  studying,  and 
five  o’clock  tea :  it  is  not  laid  out  for  battery-practice 
and  infantry  fire-tactics,  and  when  called  on  for 
such  purposes  becomes  a  pitiful  irrelevance.  And 
what  I  feel  concerned  about  is  the  relevance  of  Eng¬ 
lish  Church  fashion  in  religion  to  the  condition  of 
England  when  that  condition  is  a  state  of  war,  as 
now.  When  Reality  comes,  as  it  does  this  hour,  like 
a  Day  of  Judgment,  shall  it  find  an  English  earth 
reality  in  the  Church  to  meet  and  to  cope  with  it 
and  overmaster? 

I  trust  so,  and  something  more  than  merely  “trust 
so” :  I  have  trust  that  this  will  be. 

My  brethren  (may  they  forgive  me  if  my  refer¬ 
ence  just  now  to  some  lesser  matters  which  they 
magnify  has  seemed  slighting)  are  making  their  wars 
of  the  faith  on  small  occasions — the  problems  which 
they  actually  name — but  not  for  small  causes,  though 
they  fail  to  name  and  perhaps  to  recognise  those 
causes.  Access  to  the  Lord’s  Table,  the  Laying  on 
of  Hands,  the  preaching  of  the  Pure  Word,  these 
causes  are  great  and  very  great :  but  let  us  not  mis¬ 
take  for  them  some  quite  other  things  which  are  not 
they,  though  they  came  out  of  them  truly  enough. 
The  trouble  is  that  we  do  not  make  these  lesser  things 


40 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


go  back,  when  they  are  fairly  challenged,  to  where 
they  came  from,  and  bring  an  authorisation  with 
them,  a  passport  of  reality,  a  voucher  of  membership 
and  authority  in  the  Kingdom.  Some  of  our  staunch¬ 
est  leaders  tell  us  to  do  it,  to  “go  back  to  first  prin¬ 
ciples.”  That  is  it.  Back  to  principles,  which 
means  back  to  Beginnings  of  Faith,  is  where  I  shall 
try  to  go  for  myself.  How  far  will  that  have  to  be  ? 
Farther  perhaps  than  our  summoners  themselves  have 
in  view,  if  to  go  back  to  principles  means  to  begin 
at  principia ,  at  the  beginnings  of  things.  For  that 
beginning  lies  far  behind  the  Creeds  and  even  the 
Scripture. 

But  we  will  go  thither,  God  being  our  guide. 


CHAPTER  IV 


THE  REAL  CHURCH 

“The  waiting  at  the  gate  for  dreadful  news.” 

Reality  has  come  upon  our  nation  as  A 

r  A  “world  s 

never  it  came  for  a  hundred  years  save  one,  earth- 
since  the  Sunday  when  worshippers  coming  quake* 
out  of  a  Kentish  church  saw,  as  they  averred,  the 
churchyard  gravel  tremble  and  later  came  to  know 
this  was  the  last  shiver  of  “that  world’s  earthquake, 
Waterloo.”  I  recall  the  incident  as  it  was  retold  by 
some  one  a  generation  ago,  without  contradiction,  I 
think.  Fact  or  fancy,  it  serves  equally  well  for  a 
date.  From  the  “loud  Sabbath”  onward,  England’s 
lights  have  been  for  her  interests  or  her  honour,  never 
for  her  life.  The  quiet  Sabbath  which  opened  last 
week  ends  the  long  security  which  the  other  began. 
We  are  to  light  for  our  life,  we  Islanders ;  yes,  we. 

My  God,  to  think  what  any  morrow  of  this  war 
may  bring  of  life  or  death  to  England !  If  like  that 
giant  of  my  childhood’s  fairy-book  I  had  ears  that 
could  hear  the  grass  grow,  and  eyes  of  the  same 
calibre,  perhaps  I  could  this  morning  detect  the  shud¬ 
der  of  the  earth-mould  in  gardener  Gowan’s  lettuce 

41 


42 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


plot  as  the  ocean-quake  from  two  navies  in  the  North 
Sea,  shaking  itself  at  last  to  sleep  at  the  foot  of 
“Ben”  Tower,  Dunminster. 

If  it  should  he  our  tower  of  defence  that  should 
crumble  in  the  earthquake  and  threaten  to  give 
way - !  It  will  not  he  so,  will  not :  yet  if - 

Here  is  Reality  come  to  the  people  of  England 
after  a  hundred  years  of  unreality  except  among 
our  wise.  It  is  our  life,  the  life  unto  things  temporal, 
which  is  challenged  and  hangs  upon  the  answer  of 
our  right  hand.  Even  more  tremendously,  to  my 
thinking,  is  reality  come  to  the  Church  of  England. 
This  threat  of  secular  disaster  under  which  the 
merely  earthly  pride  and  joy  of  our  citizenship 
might  be  stricken  nigh  to  death  is  a  grimmer  chal¬ 
lenge  to  that  spiritual  fabric  so  named  than  we 
have  known  for  far,  far  longer  than  the  last  long  age 
of  secular  security.  No  assailant  of  faith,  if  it  is  only 
an  “infidel  philosophy,”  or  a  “godless  science,”  or  a 
political  wordliness  in  the  ascendant,  can  press  faith 
with  such  a  strangling  grip  as  would  the  spectacle 
of  a  starving  multitude  staring  out  on  a  desolate 
offing  for  the  corn  ships  which  delay  their  coming, 
and  seeing  there  no  vessel  but  the  grey  hull  under 
a  German  pennon  patrolling  the  barren  skyline. 

For  I  remember  a  tale  brought  back  to  us  in  1900 
by  a  travelling  English  priest  from  Boer  prisoners 
in  their  island  confinement.  They  came  to  his 
ministrations,  and  after  said  to  him,  “You  see  we 
haven’t  got  any  religion  of  our  own  now :  our  pastors 


i 


THE  RE  AT.  CHURCH 


43 

there  told  us  God  would  give  us  the  victory,  so 
we  can’t  believe  in  our  religion  any  more.”  Will 
some  of  us  feel  as  did  then  those  men  who  now  are 
our  fellow-patriots  of  Africa,  if  God  should  not  de¬ 
fend  the  right,  so  speedily  as  we  pray;  if  we  should 
have  to  tarry  the  Lord’s  leisure,  and  though  it  tarry 
wait  for  it  ? 

i 

Well  do  I  know  what  my  college  friend,  James 
V erley,  “Christopher”  let  me  call  him  again  here, 
for  his  thews  and  stature’s  sake,  is  thinking  now. 
His  own  churchmanship  was  real  of  the  «Rear, 
“Real”  Church,  and  to-day  he  thumps  his  Church- 
broad  thigh,  and  says,  “this  is  a  bit  of  the  manship* 
real  thing.”  He  indulges  in  a  grin  at  Belamice, 
that  punctilious,  erudite  “Catholic”  of  his  staff, 
young  and  too  much  bemused  with  things  secondary ; 
and  the  grin  means,  “How,  my  fine  young  assistant 
priest,  you  are  going  to  find  out  what  ‘catholic’ 
means  in  religion.  It  means  a  deal  more  than  get¬ 
ting  the  hang  of  a  ritual.  Catholic  faith  is  faith 
that  is  good  for  all  men  and  all  things.  Catholic 
priest  is  a  priest  who  is  up  to  everything,  like  one 
of  our  Tars  or  Tommies,  ‘fit  to  go  anywhere  and  do 
anything’ — quod  ubique,  quod  semper ,  quod  omnia 
agity  as  Vincent  would  write  it  if  he  were  here 
along  with  us  now.  Yes,  up  to  anything,  whatever 
it  is  that  is  ‘up  to  us’  at  the  time, — as  this  little 
tussle  just  now  to  keep  that  grand  old  thing  the 
Empire  and  the  world’s  freedom  a  going  concern  still. 
Up  to  anything,  that’s  what  Catholic  means.  And 


44 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


here’s  what  you’ve  got  to  be  up  to,  Cyprian  Bela- 
mice,  this  week  and  a  few  more:  you’ve  got  to  help 
us  show  the  world  that  Briton  is  vernacular  for 
Christian.” 

Ah,  don’t  you  be  afraid  for  Cyprian,  dear  Chris¬ 
topher  Greatheart.  Catholic  steel  can  be  as  true  as 
Puritan  iron.  He’ll  be  up  to  anything,  when  you 
show  him  that  this  anything  is  “up  to”  him.  He’ll 
be  “real”  church,  as  well  as  his  original  variety,  now 
that  a  realer  than  his  old  realities  of  ministration 
and  catechism  has  come  on  him  to  “impress”  him 
for  service  of  the  Church  Militant,  fighting  now  to 
keep  Faith’s  head  up  when  the  ill  powers  of  this 
world  try  to  rush  her  positions. 

Will  the  Church  keep  her  head  up?  Will  she 
prove  real  enough  to  cope  with  this  onset  of  reality, 
brute  reality, — War,  Hunger,  Pestilence?  She  has 
not  won  much  honour  of  late  in  milder  wars  of  lim¬ 
ited  liability.  She  made  nothing  of  a  figure  in  the 
industrial  war  three  years  ago.  In  the  all-but  civil 
war  of  late  months,  she  has  seemed  to  us  to  count 
for  nothing,  by  overt  action  at  least,  though  there 
are  some  of  her  members  whose  position  as  to  party 
politics  seemed  to  promise  that  an  overt  intervention 
on  their  part  might  be  the  very  clinch  of  a  peaceful 
decision.  Well,  these  are  bygones.  But  they  lesson 
us  to  meet  the  oncomings.  May  they  lesson  the 
Church  that  her  first  work  this  day  in  these  islands 
is  to  make  if  she  can  by  the  ministry  of  the  faith 
“the  happy  warrior”  abroad,  and  even  the  happy 


THE  REAL  CHURCH 


45 


sufferer  within  our  gates — men,  women,  children  for 
whom  Christ  died. 

Meanwhile  the  suspense!  “The  waiting  at  the 
gate  for  dreadful  news.”  How  to  bear  it !  Passio 
Christi  comforta  me. 

Shakespeare  has  two  poignant  sayings  on  Suspense. 

Better  be  with  the  dead 
Than  on  the  torment  of  the  mind  to  lie 
In  restless  ecstasy. 

But  Macbeth  was  a  bloody  villain:  how  should  he 
endure  the  torment? 

Then 

Between  the  acting  of  a  dreadful  thing 
And  the  first  motion  all  the  interim  is 
Like  a  phantasma  or  a  hideous  dream. 

But  then  Brutus,  found  in  villain  company  but 
no  worse  in  himself  than  a  pedant,  was  only  a  Stoic, 
not  yet  a  Christian. 

I  find  apter  words  than  Shakespeare’s  for  the 
mood  I  covet  now  in  those  (read  elsewhere)  of  an 
ancient  saint  crossing  a  midnight  sea  on  perilous 
mission.  Eear  is  not  his,  he  says: 

Rather  I  taste  a  mystic  joy  to  lie 
Disrobed  one  hour  of  temporal  circumstance, 

A  living  soul  by  the  All- Soul  uplift, 

Hid  in  the  hollow  of  the  Eternal’s  palm, 

Midway  between  the  worlds. 


46 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


The  To  be  ill  dread  suspense,  but  suspended 

suspense  in  the  Eternal’s  palm,  our  soul  hanging  upon 
Him,  His  right  hand  upholding  us,  com¬ 
forted  by  the  Perfect  Love  which  casteth  out  fear 
and  its  torment — this  is  the  act  for  this  moment  of 
“faith  working  through  love/’  this  is  the  due  sac¬ 
rifice  of  an  accepted  time,  and  shall  make  it,  come 
what  may,  a  day  of  salvation. 


CHAPTER  V 


JESUS  THE  LIFE  OF  MEN 

The  Quest — where  have  I  gone  on  it,  since  the  war 
surprised  us?  How  could  I  have  gone  on  it  any¬ 
where  ?  A  knight  of  the  Pound  Table  who  had 
ridden  out  to  seek  the  Grail  but  was  overtaken 
by  news  that  the  heathen  were  on  the  march  and 
Excalibur  was  going  forth  to  save  the  Kingdom, 
would  have  turned  his  horse’s  head,  and  cast  the 
twelve-month  vow  to  the  wind  and  to  Christ’s  for¬ 
giveness. 

Yes,  but  I  am  non-combatant,  and  am  not  wanted 
to  stitch,  or  nurse,  or  mount  guard  at  a  railway 
bridge,  or  do  anything  else  with  hands  and  feet  to 
help  England,  until  the  convoys  of  wounded  run 
in  to  our  junction  and  call  the  chaplains  to  the  bed¬ 
sides.  In  this  vacant  interval  the  popular  maxim, 
“business  as  usual,”  may  serve  for  my  guidance,  and 
more  worthily  than  it  serves  the  convenience  of  cer¬ 
tain  who  keep  the  shop  when  they  ought  to  be  in 
the  camp.  Theology  is  my  business  or  part  of  it: 

I  will  go  on  with  it.  Theology 

Ah,  but  not  “as  usual.”  That  would  cer-  not  “as 

usual  ^ 

tainly  be  wrong,  with  this  special  business 
of  Trinitarian  theologising  under  the  circumstances 

47 


48 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


of  this  war.  The  war  has  called  us  to  Reality,  and 
has  our  theological  “business  as  usual”  been  real  \ 
Consider.  The  most  recent  chapter  in  the  story 
has  been  a  controversy  over  the  Quicunque.  Those 
who  stood  to  arms  in  the  defence  of  the  integrity 
and  large  use  of  that  formulary  cannot  be  charged 
with  unreality  in  their  contention:  but  the  thing 
that  was  real  in  them  was  their  zeal  for  the  main¬ 
tenance  of  truth,  and  perhaps  also  their  indignation 
against  challengers ;  it  was  not  their  philosophic 
conception  of  the  truth  that  was  real.  If  they  claim 
to  be  able  to  realise  the  great  words  of  the  discussion 
— Trinity,  Person,  Substance, — they  are  claiming 
to  be  wise  beyond  mortal  measure.  If  that  claim 
cannot  stand  it  is  no  blame  to  them :  their  opponents 
are  not  wiser  than  they.  But  it  were  well  that  they 
should  accept  some  blame  for  their  failure  to  recog¬ 
nise  that  the  words  are  words  for  things  which  are 
more  than  they  or  any  one  can  realise.  They  have 

Reality  ^een  thinking  that  when  they  declare  the 
in  theo-  Divine  Reality  to  be  Three  Persons  and  yet 
logismg.  Qne  God,  or  that  Jesus  Christ  is  God  and 

Man  and  has  taken  the  Manhood  into  God,  they  are 
by  the  use  of  these  sounds  bringing  under  the  view 
of  the  mind  a  correspondent  fact  which  the  mind  is 
able  to  view.  Some  image  doubtless  rises  to  a  listen¬ 
er’s  mind,  if  it  is  an  attentive  listener,  but  it  is  prob¬ 
ably  not  the  same  image  as  the  speaker’s  and  both 
images  are  removed  from  the  actual  fact  by  an  inter- 


JESUS  THE  LIFE  OF  MEN 


49 


val  only  a  hair  breadth  short  of  infinity.  That  is 
because  both  speaker  and  hearer  are  men. 

This  is  where  our  dogmatists  are  unreal,  they  use 
words  as  if  they  were  things.  It  is  a  little  like  our 
English  way  in  politics  till  yesterday.  We  thought 
that  our  phrases  of  England’s  “insular  security” 
and  an  “international  amity”  and  “impossibility  of 
war”  had  facts  which  corresponded  to  them.  Ger¬ 
man  Realpolitik  has  taught  us  we  were  mistaken, 
and  we  are  beginning  to  be  real,  or  are  going  to 
begin.  Let  this  discovery  also  teach  us  to  be  real 
on  other  lines  than  the  organisation  of  fleets  and 
armies,  and  first  and  most  on  the  sacred  line  of 
thought  concerning  God  and  Ilis  Christ.  What  think 
we  of  Christ,  whose  Son  is  lie  ?  Let  us  think  with 
realness  and  may  our  thought  he  real.  It  is  true 
we  can  only  think  in  words,  and  words  never  can 
be  things;  yet  a  word  can  be  on  the  way  to  the 
thing,  though  it  never  will  arrive  there;  so  we  will 
go  all  the  way  that  our  words  go,  and  not  pretend 
that  we  have  gone  any  further.  And  yet  I  trust  we 
shall  go  further  somewhat,  though  not  on  the  wings 
of  words. 

Who  say  I  that  Christ  is  ?  was  the  question  Ig  «Life„ 
I  tried  to  answer,  and  I  ventured  that  He  areal 

word  ? 

is  the  Life,  for  He  said  it.  Is  that  word  in 
my  mouth  a  real  one? 

It  used  not  to  be.  There  was  no  word  of  large 
meaning  for  which  one  had  more  frequent  occasion. 
So  frequent  that  it  did  not  occur  to  one  to  ask  what 


50 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


it  meant,  unless  it  was  when  some  precipitate  scien¬ 
tist  said  he  had  found  out  how  life  is  made,  and 
thereby  scandalised  religious  people  and  set  them 
thinking  what  it  is  to  be  a  living  thing.  Well,  for 
my  own  part  I  have  got  as  far  as  to  know  this  much 
about  Life,  that  the  living  thing  lives  so  much  and 
so  long,  as  there  is  interchange  between  its  being  or 
self  and  the  world  that  encompasses  it.  If  that 
interchange  is  obstructed  it  languishes,  if  it  is  wholly 
cut  off  it  dies. 

When  then  I  believe  Jesus  Christ  to  he  the  Life 
I  am  believing  that  between  Him  and  the  Power 
that  makes  all  things  there  is  this  Self-Interchange, 
and  that  this  Interchange  is  not,  as  with  God’s 
creatures,  a  partial  communion  hut  a  perfect : 
Christ  is  not  alive  only,  but  is  the  Life.  Man, 
beast,  insect  are  alive:  these  creatures  have  the 
self-interchange  with  part,  how  minute  a  part,  of 
that  which  the  Creator  is.  But  Christ’s  self-inter¬ 
change  is  with  all  that  the  Creator  is.  That  which 
He  lives  is  the  life  which  is  lived  by  the  Father,  the 
Life  absolute,  ultimate,  originative,  the  Well  of  Life 
which  is,  said  a  psalmist,  with  God.  Wh&n  I  call 
Christ  also  the  Life  of  men,  I  declare  a  power  in  Him 
to  impart  life,  to  cause  men  to  live  as  He  lives. 
While  I  go  no  further  than  this  in  my  definition 
of  Christ  the  Life  I  lose  the  company  of  none  of 
my  Christian  brethren.  They  have  always  said  the 


same. 


JESUS  THE  LIFE  OF  MEN 


51 


But  when  they  say  it,  of  whom  is  it  said?  Of 
Christ  the  Son  of  God,  or  of  Jesus  the  Man  ? 

They  will  answer  there  can  be  no  question  of  which. 
The  Two  are  One,  for  the  Manhood  is  taken  into 
God,  Jesus  is  there  in  the  Son. 

Ah,  do  they  say  that  last — J esus  is  there  ?  The  Man 
Or  is  it  only  that  the  Manhood  is  taken  into  hood or 

^  i  a  the  Man? 

God — the  Manhood  ? 

It  is  the  latter  which  we  affirm  so  often  as  we 
recite  the  Quffiunque.  Do  we  realise  it  or  only 
recite?  I  must  not  make  myself  the  measure  of 
my  fellow-worshippers,  but  for  this  one  worshipper 
here  is  an  image  in  word  which  constructs  for  him 
no  image  in  fact.  He  does  not  blame  his  own  little 
faith  for  this:  faith  is  not  in  question,  only  logic. 
“Manhood”  is  not  a  fact  but  a  word;  there  is  no 
such  thing  as  manhood,  there  are  men,  and  there 
was  a  Man,  Jesus  the  prophet  of  Nazareth  in 
Galilee,  son  of  Mary.  This  Man,  Jesus  who  is  called 
Christ,  where  is  He  now,  where  and  what  is  Fie 
since  a  day  when  He  led  His  disciples  out  as  far 
as  to  Bethany  and  there  left  their  sight,  never  to 
return  to  sight  again?  Where  is  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
now  ? 

I  wonder  if  my  brothers  in  the  faith  will  answer 
that  question  as  I  must.  No,  not  as  I,  but  as  a 
man  of  God  would  answer,  such  a  one  as — whom 
could  I  find  a  surer  guide  of  faith? — that  saintly 
bishop  of  my  mother’s  generation,  of  whom  she 
holds  a  certain  gracious  recollection,  in  which  she 


52 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


links  with,  him  her  boy.  If  I  am  to  guard  my  own 
precarious  and  unworthy  judgment  in  a  matter 
which  is  the  very  hinge  of  sound  doctrine,  by  the 
shelter  of  his  authority,  I  must  cite  him  as  my 
mother  would.  And  I  can,  for  she  once  let  me 
read  in  her  diary  an  incident  she  treasured  from 
the  bishop’s  confirmation  address,  when  I  was  a  can¬ 
didate. 

“A  red  letter  day !  J ohn’s  confirmation. 
a  word  of  “I  never  saw  a  school  chapel  with  its 
a  saint.  congregation  till  this  afternoon.  How  mov¬ 
ing,  the  ranks  of  boys’  faces!  And  my  lad’s  fair 
head  among  the  candidates  clear  against  the  dark 
panelling  beyond  it. 

“But  the  Bishop.  Mark  used  to  say  that  his 
Good  Friday  addresses  reminded  you  one  moment 
of  John  Wesley,  the  next  of  an  early  Jesuit. 
Though  every  one  seems  like  Mark  to  love  him,  I 
was  wondering  whether  my  young  hoy,  so  full  of 
fervour  for  his  great  Headmaster,  a  very  different 
influence  from  this  simple  saint,  would  receive  any 
deep  impression.  But  there  came  a  point  where  I 
saw  John’s  eyes  travel  suddenly  from  the  beautiful 
East  window  to  the  pastoral  chair.  It  was  when 
the  Bishop  was  asking  why  many  confirmed  men, 
good  and  upright,  lapse  from  the  practice  of  Com¬ 
munion.  H  believe,’  his  sincere  tones  said,  Very 
often  it  is — just  ignorance!  They  don’t  know 
that  Jesus  Christ  is  alive!'  And  his  eyes  as  he 
paused  had  a  sort  of  clear  surprise  in  them,  that 


JESUS  THE  LIFE  OF  MEN 


53 


made  one  think  of  a  child.  The  Christ  is  alive  for 
him.” 

Christ  is  alive  for  the  boy  whose  eyes  the  saint’s 
word  drew  to  his  own  a  score  of  years  ago.  But 
for  the  man  who  was  that  boy  it  is  not  Christ  only 
who  is  alive:  it  is  Jesus  Christ.  Jesus  who  was 
dead,  “whom  Paul  affirmed  to  he  alive,”  this  same 
Jesus  lives  now.  I  seem  to  have  escaped  that 
“ignorance”  of  some;  I  think  I  know  that  Jesus  is 
alive.  Why  should  I  not  say  so  then  for  myself  ? 

Yet  I  have  some  hesitation.  My  brethren  will 
none  of  them  gainsay  St.  Paul,  nor  even  that  saint 
of  yesterday,  but  the  very  same  word  in  my  mouth 
will  perhaps  be  rebuked.  They  may  class  me  with 
those  who  acknowledge  only  a  human  Christ.  Jesus 
of  Nazareth,  they  will  say,  cannot  be  there  yonder 
with  God,  but  the  Son  of  God  who  once  for  a  little 
while  was  the  man  so  named.  The  Manhood  was 
taken  into  God,  but  how  the  Man  ? 

Yes,  how  ?  That  is  what  I  do  not  know,  The  Man_ 
the  how.  But  then  neither  do  I  know  how  b00d  in  the 

.  _  ,  T  Godhead. 

even  the  Manhood  is  taken  into  God.  1  can¬ 
not  hope  that  my  co-believers  know  this  themselves: 
indeed  I  am  sure  they  disclaim  the  knowledge:  it  is 
a  mystery,  the  fact  alone  is  revealed.  But  not  even 
the  fact  can  be  revealed,  except  so  far  as  it  is  a  fact 
which  can  be  conveyed  as  such  to  a  human  intelli¬ 
gence,  and  “manhood”  I  was  saying  is  not  a  fact  but 
a  word.  If  that  is  disputed,  let  us  test  the  case 
by  comparing  the  power  of  the  word  “manhood” 


54 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


in  the  practice  of  religion  with  the  power  of  the 
word  “man.”  How  many  conversions  come  from  a 
persuasion  that  the  Manhood  was  united  to  the  God¬ 
head  by  the  Incarnation,  how  many  from  a  belief 
that  a  Man,  this  Jesus  who  was  bom  and  died 
among  the  Jews,  is  yonder  in  the  Unseen  with  God? 
Which  saying  of  these  two  is  in  power,  which  in 
word  ? 

Ah,  yes,  let  us  be  real  and  discern  between  our 
words  which  can  make  present  to  us  a  thing,  and 
other  words  which  may  be  the  name  or  symbol  of 
things  indeed,  hut  of  things  which  cannot  he  pre¬ 
sented  to  our  understanding,  however  they  may  stir 
our  spirit  with  a  spell  for  which  there  is  no  name. 

That  spell  is  in  them,  in  many  of  them,  I  am 
sure  of  that.  When  I  have  heard  some  brother,  con¬ 
tending  earnestly  for  the  rights  of  the  Quicunque, 
aver  that  so  far  from  consenting  to  abridge  its  use 
he  would  desire  to  restore  the  daily  recital  of  the 
old  church,  I  have  not  thought  he  was  merely  en¬ 
couraging  himself  to  battle  by  a  splendid,  valiant 
hyperbole.  Oh  no,  this  is  just  his  good  soldiership. 
In  old  armies  the  war-trumpet  when  it  blew  for  onset 
was  not  the  fire  of  battle  in  the  soldier’s  heart,  but 
the  soldier  kindled  at  it  as  if  it  were;  his  passion 
and  that  strain  of  music  had  been  wedded  into  one ; 
the  musical  phrase  on  the  instrument  did  not  hold 
the  meaning,  the  meaning  was  all  in  the  man’s  mind 
which  caught  and  echoed  them.  And  so  our  earnest 
contender  for  the  faith  prizes  the  phrases  of  this 


I 


JESUS  THE  LIFE  OF  MEN 


55 


credal  war-chant  not  for  their  meaning  only  (though 
unlike  the  soldier’s  music  they  have  it)  hut  for  the 
faith  in  him  which  springs  to  arms  at  the  sound, 
because  it  happens  that  their  music  and  his  meaning 
have  become  one  in  his  soul.  “The  thing  becomes 
a  trumpet,”  and  he  answers  it  with  a  soldier’s  truth. 
Only  let  him  not  on  his  part  accuse  others  as  lag¬ 
gards  or  deserters,  because  they  desire  some  other 
arrangement  of  the  war-music  to  which  their  spirit 
is  better  attuned,  and  which  teaches  their  hands 
to  war  and  their  fingers  to  fight  with  a  more  divine 
commandingness. 


Well,  then  I  shall  try  to  be  real  in  my  The 
thought  of  the  Risen  Lord,  and  to  discern  known 
between  the  word  which  speaks  of  a  “man-  !?r(llish 
hood”  taken  into  God,  and  that  which  de-  hood, 
dares  a  “man,”  even  Jesus,  to  have  entered  the 
divine  existence  and  to  be  there  beside  the  Father. 
Before  the  wonder  of  a  Jesus  who  is  still  a  Man 
and  also  the  Son  of  God  I  bow  myself  even  as  I  bow 
in  wistful,  trustful  reverence  before  some  altar  built 
by  hands  of  mortal  workmen,  where  I  can  see  the 
stone  of  sacrifice  but  not  the  Sacrificed  thereon. 
Him  I  see  not,  yet  I  know  Him  there.  From  the 
wrought  masonry  of  the  earthly  shrine  which  my 
eyes  of  flesh  can  measure  I  pass  by  other  vision  to 
see  but  not  now,  to  behold  but  not  nigh,  the  Reality 
into  which  that  earthly  reality  melts  and  flows  and 
merges  across  the  bar  of  sense.  Would  my  vision 


56 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


pass  across  that  bound  to  the  divine  Beyond  if  it 
were  not  lifted  thither  by  that  stepping-stone  of  the 
solid  material  fact,  this  altar  built  by  art  and  man’s 
device?  Do  I  the  less  behold  the  Lamb  of  God  be¬ 
cause  these  heaped  stones  of  which  my  touch  assures 
me  are  telling  me  that  Christ  our  passover  is  sac¬ 
rificed  for  us  ? 

Then  neither  do  I  lose  the  sight  of  the  Divine 
Son  of  God  because  I  fasten  my  gaze  on  that  of 
Him  which  the  gaze  can  reach,  that  of  Him,  of  the 
human  Person  now  in  the  glory,  which  I  can  know 
and  cleave  to  and  cleaving  can  have  life.  I  do  not 
the  less  behold  Him  that  is  invisible  because  I  see 
Him  with  the  mortal  eyes  of  my  brethren  who  saw 
Him  in  the  flesh,  and  touch  Him  by  their  hands 
which  handled  Him, — Jesus  of  Hazareth  the  Son 
of  Mary,  who  is  the  Christ  the  Son  of  the  living 
God. 


CHAPTER  VI 


A  NEW  SCIENCE 

“Well,”  said  Langton,  after  I  had  tried  to  put  out 
my  idea,  on  which  I  wanted  his  opinion,  about  the 
human  personality  of  Jesus  and  its  survival;  “Well,” 
he  said.  And  after  that  he  said  nothing  for  a 
time. 

Is  there  any  one  else,  not  an  intimate,  to  Acoun- 
whom  I  could  have  given  this  theological  con-  selIor* 
fklence  of  mine,  as  I  did  venture  with  this  veteran 
of  the  Tractarian  rank  and  file?  But  when  I  was 
hunting  round  for  some  plain  mind  among  the  ortho¬ 
dox  for  a  doxy-meter  by  which  to  measure  the  sound¬ 
ness  or  the  vice  of  my  theory,  I  came  up  against 
the  tall  big- jointed  figure,  beloved  of  high  and  low, 
that  now  goes  in  and  out  of  the  Minster  Library 
door;  and  I  thought,  “Langton  was  the  soul  of 
charity  in  faith  while  he  was  priest  of  a  parish. 
Don’t  I  remember  his  sympathy  once  myself,  when 
other  people  had  less?  And  now  that  he  has  no 
flock  of  his  own  for  whose  instruction  he  is  respon¬ 
sible  he  will  find  it  still  easier  to  listen  patiently 
to  a  heterodox,  if  I  am  one.  If  he  can  pass  my 
doctrine,  it  will  not  offend  people  of  his  school: 

57 


58 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


if  he  cannot,  no  mischief  will  he  made  by  my  speak¬ 
ing  out  to  him.”  So  I  went  across  to  his  library 
and  asked  for  a  few  minutes  chat  in  his  sanctum 
there.  Then  I  laid  my  thesis  before  him,  and  asked 

him  how  it  would  be  taken  by  the  conservative  in 

* 

religion. 

He  said,  “Well,”  and  nursed  his  knee  in  a  silence, 
till  I  began  to  fear  the  worst.  Then  “I  don’t  feel 
quite  sure,  Desmond,  whether  I’m  to  say  what  I 
think  or  what  other  people  will  think.  If  it’s  me, 
— I  feel  I’m  quite  with  you;  oh  I  can’t  say  how 
much  I  am  with  you.  You  make  my  heart  beat, 
when  you  talk  of  the  human  Jesus,  the  one  that 
Peter  loved  and  that  loved  John,  that  same  Jesus 
being  as  near  to  ns  as  He  was  to  those  two,  just  as 
one  sometimes  dares  to  hope  some  very  dear  friend 
of  one’s  own  may  be  with  one  still.  For  I  have 
felt  like  that,  Desmond,  sometimes,  just  like  that. 
But  then  it’s  not  me  that’s  in  your  mind.  I’m  such 
a  poor  theologian,  and  what  I  think  can’t  matter. 
You’re  thinking,  are  you  not  ?  of  those  who  feel 
themselves  responsible  for  the  dogmatic  statement  of 
the  faith,  and  who  have  to  be  severe  about  defining 
it  and  maintaining  the  true  tradition,  people  like — 
like - ” 

“Like  Captain  Atherton?”  I  suggested.  (A  late 
churchwarden  of  Langton’s,  a  very  stalwart  person, 
who  writes  letters  on  “The  Modernist  Betrayal.”) 

“Ho,  not  Atherton,”  he  said  rather  dreamily.  “I 
was  not  thinking  of  Atherton.  I  believe  I  was  rather 


A  NEW  SCIENCE 


59 


thinking  of  Athanasius.  I  was  wondering  whether 
you  will  not  seem  to  be  contradicting  the  Athanasian 
creed.  Does  it  not  sound  like  saying  that  there  are 
two  Persons  in  Christ  and  not  only  two  Natures  in 
one  Person  ?  I  expect  they  will  say  you  The  Four 
have  fallen  into  one  of  the  four  heresies,  Heresies. 

though  I  don’t  know  which  at  the  moment.  The 
truth  is  I  never  can  keep  them  clear  in  my  head. 
But  are  you  not  afraid  that  is  what  they  will  say 
about  you?” 

“Very  much  afraid,”  I  answered,  “and  what  is 
worse  I  am  afraid  they  may  be  right.  But  then  it 
is  my  fear  that  we  all  do  it:  I  fancy  any  one  who 
really  tries  to  understand  the  Incarnation  has  to 
fall  into  all  the  heresies  concerning  the  divine  and 
the  human,  one  after  the  other;  which,  when  one 
thinks,  is  exactly  what  the  Church  herself  did 
through  all  the  time  of  the  Four  Heresies,  and  indeed 
ever  since,  though  we  do  not  say  so,  but  give  new 
names  to  the  same  old  misdirections  of  the  Church’s 
thought.  I  suppose  this  happens  because  our  minds 
are  made  that  way:  we  can  only  keep  straight  on 
the  road  of  belief,  it  seems,  by  blundering  into  first 
the  one  ditch  and  then  into  the  other.  The  Church 
calls  these  blundering  steps  Heresies.  In  all  other 
walks  than  religion ,  we  call  the  same  process  the 
‘zigzag  of  progress’ :  more  politely,  and  more  cor¬ 
rectly  too.  When  one  is  told  super  antiquas  stare  sed 
ire  vias,  I  feel  the  metaphor  is  inexact.  We  do  not 
keep  the  road  by  standing  on  it:  we  stumble  off 


60 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


it  this  side  and  that,  correcting  one  stumble  by  an¬ 
other.  That  stare  sed  ire  always  brings  to  my  mind 
nowadays  those  moving  pathways  and  staircases  at 
exhibitions  ;  there  you  really  can  stand  and  go  on 
at  the  same  time.  But  religion  has  no  such  mechan¬ 
ical  road  of  faith,  and  never  will  have.  You  must  do 
the  marching  yourself.  ” 

I  stopped  there,  doubting  if  it  was  quite  fair  of 
me  to  speak  so  frankly  to  Langton.  I  might  be  put¬ 
ting  an  undue  strain  on  that  most  sweet  and  perfect 
charity  of  his,  and  embarrassing  him  between  it  and 
his  loyalty  to  his  own  school.  But  while  I  was 
searching  for  other  words  to  ease  him  he  made  them 
needless  by  saying, 

“Do  you  know,  Desmond,  it  does  me  good  to  hear 
you  say  that.  Those  heresies — when  I  was  reading 
for  orders  I  never  could  keep  them  separate  for 
more  than  a  week  together.  And  while  I  did  get 
hold  of  them,  I  used  to  feel  some  of  them  were  very 
reasonable,  like  what  I  should  have  thought  about 
it,  if  I  had  been  left  to  myself,  and  couldn’t  trust 
the  Church.  ...  It  helps  me  to  understand  the 
Romans,  their  idea  of  leaving  such  things  to  the 
Church.  .  .  .”  After  a  maturing  pause,  “Dudding- 
liam  here  says  he  wishes  we  read  the  Athanasian 
Creed  every  day.” 

This  last  remark  had  much  less  in  consequence 
than  appears  when  I  write  it  down  here;  the  ellipse 
was  easy  to  supply. 

I  took  it  up  just  there.  “I  hope  not  to  fall  foul 


A  NEW  SCIENCE 


61 


of  Duddingham  over  this,  if  he  will  understand 
me.  There  is  no  word  in  the  Quicunque  which 
my  theory  of  the  Continued  Humanity  disputes, 
though  there  are  some  of  which  I  can  no  more 
clearly  define  the  meaning  than  perhaps  Dudding- 
ham  can,  or  (may  one  not  say  it?)  the  author  of 
the  creed  could  when  he  wrote  them.  It  The  oia  in 
seems  to  me  I  am  not  saying  anything  at the  New- 
all  about  that  creed’s  main  assertion — that  ‘the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ  ...  is  God.’  That  is  the  Catholic 
faith,  and  I  for  my  part  ‘faithfully  believe  it.’  But 
I  also  believe  faithfullv  the  other  assertion  of  the 

t/ 

creed,  that  Christ  ‘is  God  and  Man’;  and  this  is 
the  belief  I  am  seeking  to  believe  not  faithfully 
only,  but  understanding^,  with  all  my  soul  but 
also  with  all  my  mind.  I  am  trying  to  think  out 
for  myself  all  the  riches  of  Christ,  not  unsearchable 
if  only  we  will  search,  that  lie  in  that  truth,  Jesus 
was  Man  and  is  Man,  has  a  real  human  personality 
now,  because  once  He  had  it,  and  therefore  must 
have  it  for  ever,  else  it  was  only  a  phantom  Christ 
who  was  crucified  and  buried.  Why,  Langton” — 
and  here  I  wondered  I  had  never  seen  this  before, 
“if  we  did  not  believe  this  actual  person,  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  is  still  a  living  person,  the  same  living 
human  person  with  all  that  belonged  to  him  as  the 
human  being  who  once  taught  and  worked  and  made 
disciples,  how  could  we  believe  our  own  persons 
will  survive?  If  Jesus,  not  the  Christ  but  Jesus, 
is  not  risen,  then  neither  shall  we  rise;  there  is 


62 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


no  ‘survival  of  personality/ — unless  indeed  a  cer¬ 
tain  new  science  can  prove  it  to  us;  the  Gospel  does 
not,  if  the  ‘first-born  among  many  brethren*  was 
not  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  but  only  Christ  the  Son  of 
God.  A  metaphysical  Christ — we  can  not  be 
younger  brethren  of  such  a  one;  of  a  human  Jesus 
we  can.” 

“Yes,  that  is  so  true,”  said  Langton,  “when  we 
are  thinking  of  the  Resurrection.  There  one  does 
want  the  human  Jesus,  not  what  you  call  the  meta¬ 
physical  Christ.  But  when  one  comes  to  think  about 
the  Atonement  and  the  Sitting  at  the  Right  Hand, 
and  the  Perpetual  Intercession,  and  so  one  gets  into 
metaphysics,  if  only  one  had  the  head  for  them — 
that’s  where  one  cannot  keep  hold  on  the  human 
Christ.  Jesus  coming  back  alive  and  just  what  He 
had  been  to  His  disciples,  I  can  imagine  that.  But 
a  hard  Jesus  at  the  Right  Hand,  that’s  the  dif- 

saymg.  ficnlty.” 

I  acknowledged  it.  But  then  in  ordinary  life 
difficulties  were  made,  we  say,  for  the  brave  to  over¬ 
come,  and  it  should  be  the  same  in  the  religious. 
Jesus  the  Man  sitting  at  the  Right  Hand,  continu¬ 
ing  the  Atonement,  it  is  a  hard  saying,  who  can 
The  hardy  bear  it?  Well,  perhaps  the  hardy,  if  they 

can  hear  it.  harclily  enough. 

“And  then,  Langton,  in  common  matters  we  call 
it  bad  science  to  bring  in  a  new  theory  to  explain 
new  facts  if  an  old  one  will  serve.  The  Law  of 
Parsimony  applies  to  theology  too.  If  what  can 


A  NEW  SCIENCE 


63 


be  known  of  the  powers  possessed  by  Jesus  as  Man, 
working  on  earth,  will  explain  what  he  does  for 
us  in  heaven,  this  will  be  a  true  account  of  Christ’s 
work;  at  least  it  will  be  part  of  the  account,  and 
we  are  bound  to  learn  all  there  is  to  be  learned  of 
this  before  we  go  further  into  transcendental  things. 
There  are  heavenly  witnesses  who  alone  can  show 
us  the  last  truths  of  existence,  but  they  that  bear 
witness  on  earth  must  first  be  heard  by  us.” 

I  got  up  to  go,  and  he  stopped  me. 

“Oh,  don’t  go  yet,  Desmond.  What  was  Acertaiu 
that  about  ‘a  certain  new  science,’  and  it  new 

,  ,  „  science. 

might  come  to  ‘prove  the  survival  oi  person¬ 
ality,’  I  think  you  said.  Is  it  the  Psychical  Research 
people  you  mean  ?” 

“Yes,  that  was  what  I  meant.  Are  you  taking 
an  interest  in  that?” 


“Well,  I  think  1  should,  if  I  knew  more  about 
it;  but  I  find  some  of  my  friends  whose  judgment 
I  value  rather  shake  their  heads  when  it  is  men¬ 
tioned,  and  I  suppose  that  has  put  me  off  inquiring. 
Ought  one  to  go  into  it,  would  you  say?  ,  .  .  as* 
religious  men,  I  mean.” 

And  he  gave  me  a  slightly  troubled  look.  I  under¬ 
stood  it:  he  had  in  mind  Eldway,  who  at  a  ruri- 
decanal  chapter  lately  was  denouncing  spiritualism 
and  all  its  works,  and  expressly  included  in  these 
the  recent  labours  of  the  psychic  research  people: 
if  thou  shalt  not  suffer  a  witch  to  live,  how  shalt 


64 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


thou  let  her  come  alive  again  in  a  medium?  I  had 
a  moment’s  hesitation,  hut  decided  it. 

“Yow,  Langton,  I  hope  you  won’t  think  this  is 

presumption  in  me,  hut  only  honesty,  and  confidence 

in  you.  I  am  so  hold  as  to  expect  that  this  new 

science — for  all  this  psychical  research,  Telepathy 

and  the  rest,  is  a  science,  you  know,  a  quite  natural, 

sound,  straightforward,  wholesome  one — is  going  to 

do  great  things  in  religion,  very  great  things.  Yes, 

if  it  is  not  unbecoming  in  me  to  say  it,  when  I  know 

so  little  about  these  researches,  I  am  hoping  this 

new  knowledge  will  make  all  things  new  in  theology, 

as  when  Copernicus  widened  out  the  skies  for  us. 

Why,  just  think !  If  it  made  such  a  difference  when 

we  learnt  that  the  earth  goes  round  the  sun,  how 

will  it  be  if  we  learn  that  a  man  can  go  round  the 

earth  without  crossing  his  doorstep  ?  But  that  is 

what  he  does,  if  by  thinking  a  thought  in  England 

he  makes  a  friend  think  the  same  in  Japan.  It  will 

New  make  earth  a  new  place.  And  will  it  stop 

science,  there?  If  an  Englishman  can  be  in  Japan 
new  earth. 

’  as  well  as  at  home,  why  not  in  Mars,  pro¬ 
vided  the  Martians  have  organs  of  consciousness  like 
our  own  ?  Yew  earth  and  new  heavens  too !  Think, 
Langton.  Shall  we  not  have  to  rewrite  all  our  school¬ 
books  on  theology  ?  .  .  . 

“Yes,  I  know,  that  will  make  trouble  perhaps 
with  some  of  our  grammarians.  To  say  so  muck 
to  others  than  you  would  not  be  becoming,  at  any 
rate  till  I  have  thought  things  out  longer  and  am 


A  NEW  SCIENCE 


65 


more  sure  of  my  ground.  You  must  give  me  some 
law,  dear  friend,  and  not  put  Eldway  on  my  tracks 
for  a  bit ;  but  you  and  I  can  talk  of  this  again.” 

Then  I  added,  “We  mustn’t  let  telepathy  put  out 
of  our  heads  what  I  really  came  to  confer  about,  the 
Continued  Humanity,  and  how  to  reconcile  it  with 
the  Quicunque.  So  I  hope  you  will  tell  Dudding- 
ham  that  he  must  not  think  we  are  against  him  at 
all.  We  are  only  trying  to  know  all  there  is  still 
to  know  about  the  Christ  who  is  Man.  At  least  that 
is  what  I  try  to  do;  and  I  shall  go  on  trying,  God 
being  my  helper.” 

“Oh,  go  on,  Desmond,”  he  said,  “go  on.  I’m  sure 
you  are  right.  I  think  ...  I  hope  ...  we  shall 
all  of  us  go  with  you ;  yes,  God  being  our  helper.” 


PART  II:  THE  ATONEMENT 
THROUGH  LIFE 


CHAPTER  YII 

THE  LAMB  OF  GOD 

Yesterday  it  was  Langton  bidding  me  “go  on.” 
To-day,  as  if  it  were  by  preconcert,  comes  a  provoca¬ 
tion  to  it  from  my  mother. 

I  do  not  know  if  one  ought  to  blame  the  a  Hymn 
newspapers  for  publishing  that  unspeakable  ofHate- 
Hymn  of  Hate,  with  which  the  Bavarian  “Jugend” 
confesses  the  national  sin  of  a  generation  or  longer. 
It  is  a  fact,  this  hatred  of  us  by  a  nation  from 
junker  to  kerl ;  the  most  vital  fact,  and  therefore  for 
us  the  most  mortal,  with  which  England  has  to 
reckon ;  and  England  from  pedant  to  pauper  must 
be  made  to  reckon.  Yes,  I  suppose  it  is  necessary 
that  England  should  know  this  fact,  but  this  morning 
I  wished  that  one  mother  in  England,  Frances  Des¬ 
mond,  might  have  been  spared  the  knowledge,  when 
I  saw  her  put  down  the  paper  with  a  shudder.  “Have 
you  seen  this,  John?”  (I  had.)  “It  is  horrible. 
And  yet  they  call  themselves  Christians.” 

“Are  you  right  about  that,  mother?”  I  answered. 

67 


68 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


“I  am  not  sure  they  do  call  themselves  Christians, 
those  of  them  who  think  they  know  about  things. 
One  understands  from  Germany  itself  that  the  na¬ 
tional  spirit  is  at  last  recovering  from  a  disastrous 
submission  to  the  Gospel  made  by  those  docile  Goths, 
Vandals,  Pluns,  just  when  their  own  true  gods,  Mur¬ 
der  and  Plunder  (now  renamed  Heroism  and 
Deutschland  iiher  Alles)  had  triumphed  over  Rome, 
and  when  the  race  might  have  imposed  on  the  world 
the  gospel  of  Teutonic  culture.  Certainly  Professor 
Eucken  has  been  asking  ‘Can  we  still  be  Christian  V 
and  answering  that  we  can,  provided  we  are  not 
any  particular  sort  of  Christians.  But  from  recent 
utterances  even  of  him  I  gather  that  the  particular 
sort  of  Christian  you  and  I  wish  to  belong  to,  the 
sort  that  think  Right  is  Might  and  that  the  Gospel 
is  not  Will  to  Power  but  Will  to  Love,  are  not  to 
be  included  with  himself  in  that  We.  At  least  we 
could  not  include  him,  on  the  strength  of  his 
confession  of  faith  in  the  rightness  of  his  country’s 
doings.” 

This  was  a  wretched  lecture,  and  I  cut  it  short  in 
remorse,  seeing  mother’s  face. 

“Oh,  I  can’t  think  about  it  like  that,  not  in  that 
cool  historical  way,  and  I  don’t  care  anything  at 
all  about  Professor  Eucken.  Why  should  he  know 
more  about  such  things  than  any  of  us?  All  I  can 
think  of  is  the  horror  that  in  countries  which  used 
to  be  Christian,  whatever  they  call  themselves  just 


THE  LAMB  OF  GOD 


69 


now,  men  are  being  murdered  by  thousands,  and 
women  and  children.  .  .  .” 

Presently  she  went  on.  “Yet  it’s  not  that. 
It’s  the  bate  which  makes  them  do  it,  the  awful 
sin  against  love,  the  trampling  on  the  Cross.  It 
makes  one  ask  if  the  Cross  really  is  able  to  redeem 
the  world.  .  .  .  Last  Sunday  when  the  Agnus  Dei 
was  sung,  I  said  to  myself,  ‘Do  you  really  believe 
the  Lamb  of  God  does  take  away  the  sin  of  the 
world  ?  Why  does  He  not  take  away  this  huge 
sin  of  Europe,  anger  and  malice  and  all  uncharitable¬ 
ness.7  For  this  sin  has  grown  worse  not  better, 
much  worse  than  a  hundred  years  ago.  Those 
letters  we  have  of  my  great  grandfather — he  was 
in  our  embassy  in  Prussia — give  one  a  good  idea  of 
how  we  English  felt  towards  the  French.  Our 
people  were  horribly  afraid  of  them,  and  ‘Boney7 
was  the  word  to  quell  children  with  in  a  nursery, 
but  the  feeling  wasn’t  like  this  German  feeling, 
though  we  have  done  them  no  wrong  and  no  sensible 
person  there  was  really  afraid  of  us.  But  they  sing 
this  ghastly  thing  against  us.  How  is  the  Lamb 
of  God  taking  away  this  sin  of  the  world,  hatred  and 
murder?  .  .  . 

“Archdeacon  Jefferson  said  to  me,  when  TheHymn 
I  was  a  airl  and  asked  that  question,  ‘To  and  the 

0  x  Crucifix. 

understand  this  one  must  look  at  the  Cruci¬ 
fix.7  I  don’t  find  that  answers  my  doubt  now:  do 
you,  John?” 

I  said  I  found  I  must  look  beyond  that;  when 


70 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


we  talked  of  the  Cross  being  the  world-secret,  it 

was  vain  talk,  unless  by  the  Cross  we  meant  much 

more  than  it.  “Do  you  know,  mother,  you  have 

asked  the  very  question  I  am  trying  to  get  some 

What  is  answer  to  for  myself — how  it  is  that  Christ 

Atone-  takes  away  the  sin  of  the  world.  What  does 
ment  ? 

He  actually  do  when  in  our  phrase  He  works 
atonement  ?  We  have  words  and  phrases  for  it,  hut 
when  we  put  a  meaning  on  them  we  often  want  to 
drop  the  meaning  and  the  word  with  it.  Who  can 
really  bear  to  talk  of  a  Propitiation  ?  A  God  whose 
anger  can  be  slaked  by  a  victim’s  blood — would  even 
Prussian  William,  worshipper  of  Thor,  which  is 
German  for  Moloch,  in  saner  moods  acknowledge 
such  a  one?  Vicarious  punishment — our  moralists 
try  to  bolster  it  up  by  telling  us  the  innocent  do 
suffer  (but  suffering  is  not  punishment)  for  the  sins 
of  the  guilty,  and  in  some  rather  roundabout  way 
their  pains  tend  to  make  things  better,  as  by  turning 
the  hearts  of  wrong  doers  (though  I  think  the  pains 
of  Belgium  have  made  the  Germans  worse  at  present, 
as  mostly  happens  between  victim  and  tyrant)  :  but 
we  want  something  more  direct  for  Christ’s  work 
upon  sinners — some  redemption  which  is  more  cer¬ 
tain  and  essential,  not  a  mere  by-product  of  the  act 
of  sacrifice,  like  the  moralist’s  account  of  it.  And, 
mother,  most  of  all  we  want  a  way  of  redemption 
that  shall  look  like  God’s  way,  His,  one  that  will 
match  the  whole  scenery  of  creation  so  far  as  we 
see  it.  Philosophers  have  called  creation  the  Gar- 


THE  LAMB  OF  GOD 


71 


ment  of  God.  Now,  say  what  we  may  about  the 
contrast  of  World  and  Church,  and  the  Gospel  re¬ 
versing  human  values,  one  does  think  the  scheme  of 
salvation  will  not  he  a  new  purple  patch  on  a  sordid 
old  garment  of  a  general  world-scheme.  Why,  the 
sky  over  us  is  never  so  lovely  a  blue  that  the  dull 
grey  or  brown  earth  landscape  and  it  seem  to  do  one 
another  a  violence;  the  threads  that  weave  the  col¬ 
ours  run  through  both,  and  make  a  harmony  under 
the  clash.  That  is  what  I  want  to  get  sight  of,  the 
harmony  of  the  old  creation  and  the  new  creation, 
Christ’s.  And  I  hope,  I  do  really  hope,  I  am  getting 
some  little  glimpse  of  it.  Of  course  it  will  be  no 
good,  even  if  I  do  get  it,  for  any  one  but  myself — or 
myself  and  perhaps  you,  mother.  But  that’s  a  deal 
more  than  any  one  has  a  right  to  ask  for,  to  find  a 
truth  that  will  do  for  himself  and  for  one  other  too.” 

She  took  up  my  hand.  “John,  John,  you  must 
do  it,  you  must.  Try  and  tell  us  about  it  in  one  of 
your  Advent  sermons.  Oh  I  know  you  will  be  able 
to  do  it.  Thank  God  for  His  good  gift.” 

I  did  not  look  at  her ;  I  looked  out  of  the  window. 

A  drift  of  leaves  came  off  the  swaying  elm.  I  said 

to  myself,  “The  wind  bloweth  where  it  listeth.” 
****** 

What  is  this  glimpse  I  am  hoping  for  of  the  truth 
of  the  Atonement?  I  have  been  hold  enough  to 
tell  my  mother  that  our  old  names  for  it — Propitia¬ 
tion,  Vicarious  Suffering — do  not  truly  name  our 
belief  any  longer.  They  are  what  grammarians 


72 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


might  call  “effete  metaphors”;  they  have  lost  fea¬ 
ture,  mercifully ;  if  we  really  recovered  their  original 
features  of  meaning,  we  should  have  to  denounce 
Atonement  ^em  and  abandon.  They  remain  because 
and  inter-  they  have  come  to  he  sounds  calling  up  a 

cession.  ,  ,, 

happier  and  a  truer  meaning,  though  a 
vague.  But  even  that  other  metaphor,  the  Inter¬ 
cession  at  the  Right  Hand,  does  even  this  con¬ 
tent  us?  Ho,  nor  this.  For  how  does  the  Christ 
intercede,  since  He  does  not,  as  in  our  childish  fancy, 
lean  from  His  seat  in  heaven  to  whisper  a  depreca¬ 
tion  into  the  ear  of  His  Father,  the  Judge  of  all  the 
earth.  What  is  it  that  takes  place  on  earth,  what 
happens  upon  a  mortals  soul,  when  the  Intercessor 
prevails,  and  the  sinner  is  pardoned  and  reconciled  ? 
What? 

It  is  this  I  am  to  say,  if  I  can,  in  the  Advent 
sermon  she  has  tasked  me  with. 

I  do  not  know  if  I  shall  be  able  to  say  it  there,  or 
if  it  will  be  right  to  do  so.  But  I  may  say  it  here, 
alone,  and  I  will  try. 

“Qui  Bor  I  do  not  in  my  own  mind  doubt  at  all 

tollls”  Atonement, — not  as  it  works  in 

heaven  but  as  it  works  on  earth,  where  we  can  partly 
scan  it;  not  as  Christus  Consummator  reconciles  the 
world  to  the  Father,  but  as  Jesus  who  died  and  rose 
takes  away  that  sin  of  the  world  which  is  in  me 
and  any  mortal  brother; — that  the  Atonement  is  the 
same  action  as  that  by  which  Jesus  of  Hazareth  took 
the  sin  away  from  Peter  and  James  and  John  and 


THE  LAMB  OF  GOD 


73 


Andrew,  from  the  Magdalene  and  the  other  Maries  ; 
the  same  as  that  by  which  Jesus  whom  he  perse¬ 
cuted  took  away  from  Paul  the  sin  which  kicked 
against  the  pricks;  and  by  which  the  deliverance 
from  the  selfish  seif  has  been  wrought  in  every  soul 
of  man  or  woman  who  has  entered  the  fellowship  of 
Christ’s  Church. 

Jesus  takes  sin  away  by  giving  life.  Sin  is  the 
failure  of  life.  Heinous  sin  or  venial,  it  is  the  same ; 
it  is  disease  winning  against  health,  disintegration 
against  wholeness,  decay  outstripping  reparation, 
death  defeating  life.  In  the  stricken  body  nothing 
can  remove  disease  except  more  life  infused ;  in 
the  stricken  soul  disease  is  called  Sin,  but  its  cure 
is  no  otherwise.  Christ  takes  it  away  by  giving  the 
sinner  life. 

Many  of  our  most  devout  do  not  like  one  to  speak 
thus;  it  is  too  negative,  not  severe  enough,  too  like 
the  indulgent  view,  they  say,  of  the  Greek  for  whom 
sin  was  only  a  missing  of  the  mark.  Sin  is  enmity 
to  God;  it  has  hatred  in  it,  and  rancour  against 
good ;  it  is  a  positive  thing  and  a  violent,  an  armed 
adversary,  an  Apollyon,  not  to  be  treated  with,  not 
to  be  spared,  but  always  and  only  to  be  fought, 
hunted  down,  and  slain. 

And  I  answer  that  all  this  is  true,  but  true  sin. 
in  the  language  of  metaphor,  not  of  fact ;  it  tells  us 
what  sin  is  like  to  the  mind  of  man,  not  what  it  is 
like  in  the  nature  of  the  world.  And  even  in  meta¬ 
phor  it  is  true  for  some  forms  only  of  sin  and  not 


74 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


for  others.  Murder  done  in  cold  hate,  lust  conscious 
of  its  victim’s  ruin,  greed  trampling  on  faith  be¬ 
tween  man  and  man,  this  sin  is  Apollyon.  But  the 
intemperance  of  the  avenger  of  blood,  the  weak  yield¬ 
ing  of  the  seduced,  the  hunger  that  steals  before  it 
starves,  this  too  is  sin,  hut  it  is  not  Apollyon.  And 
I  want  the  word  which  can  be  said  of  both.  But 
if  Life  be,  as  I  think  it,  the  highest,  deepest,  widest, 
word  by  which  Good  can  be  named  among  men  at 
least,  then  the  Evil  which  is  sin  can  bear  no  stronger 
name  than  Death.  Can  Life  have  a  more  hostile 
adversary  than  the  destroyer  of  life ;  can  anything  be 
more  deadly  than  death  ? 

Yet  I  am  leaving  behind  me  an  unanswered  ob¬ 


jection  which  would  threaten  the  safety  of  my  ad- 
creation  vance*  The  Atonement,  it  will  be  felt,  can- 
and Atone- not  be  just  identified  with  the  Creation;  it 

ment. 

may  be  the  giving  of  life,  but  the  mode  of 
the  gift  when  its  work  is  to  reconcile  the  estranged 
cannot  be  the  same  as  its  mode  when  it  begins  or 
continues  a  creation.  Perhaps  we  have  made  too 
much  of  sin,  but  sin  is  something  in  the  world,  and 
the  abolition  of  sin  cannot  really  be  the  same  thing 
as  the  promotion  of  goodness  and  the  maintenance 
of  innocency.  But  this  abolition  of  sin  is  what  the 
Atonement  means,  and  the  task  for  me  is  to  detect 
the  specific  difference  of  God’s  creative  action, 
when  it  brings  a  clean  thing  out  of  an  unclean 
and  makes  the  sinful  thing  which  is,  be  as  if  it  were 
not. 


THE  LAMB  OF  GOD 


75 


Well,  just  now  in  Dunminster  we  have  in  our 
view  an  analogy  of  nature  which  promises  help  to 
my  theory.  We  are  abolishing  some  evil  in  the 
wards  and  operation  rooms  of  our  war-hospital, 
the  evil  of  pain  and  death.  How  is  this  done  ?  By 
the  physicians’  surgery  and  drugs,  by  the  nurses’ 
tendance?  Hot  without  them  certainly,  but  it 
is  not  they  that  cause  the  recovery.  Nothing  can 
destroy  sickness  and  death  except  the  coming  of 
life,  and  these  medicaments  and  tools  are  not 
ministers  of  life,  they  only  remove  the  obstacles 
to  life.  The  vis  medicatrix  naturae  is  never  super¬ 
seded  by  the  most  exquisite  operation  of  medicine; 
nature  is  only  set  free  to  move  along  unmolested 
tracks  by  the  knife  which  prunes  away  a  diseased 
member  and  the  appliances  which  fend  off  the 
noxious  germs  or  provoke  the  numbed  vitality  and 
stir  the  fires  of  life.  The  healing  of  these  stricken 
men  in  their  beds  is  the  same  activity  of  nature  as 
was  their  health  on  the  march  to  war;  the  differ¬ 
ence  is  that  an  external  cause,  an  enemy’s  sword 
or  shot,  has  severed  or  dammed  the  channels  of  the 
interchange  between  the  wounded  organism  and 
its  environment,  or  between  the  whole  organism  and 
a  member  of  it.  That  is  how  I  figure  to  myself 
the  creative  creation  and  the  redemptive  creation, 
the  “days  of  man’s  innocence”  (or  the  metaphysical 
equivalent  of  that  expression)  and  the  “day  of 
salvation.”  Sin  is  a  fact  as  truly  as  the  bullet  or 
bayonet  wound,  though  its  origin  is  not  as  easy  to 


76 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


assign.  It  was  an  importation  into  the  world  of 
living  creatures,  and  has  required  the  importation 
of  a  remedy.  But  this  remedy  of  the  stricken 
soul  as  of  the  body  can  only  set  free  the  energy  of 
life,  make  the  rough  places  smooth  for  the  path  of 
salvation. 

So  the  question  seems  now  to  be  this.  “When 
the  health  of  man  was  broken  by  the  entry  of  sin 
(how  it  entered  we  must  leave  to  any  religious  re¬ 
searcher  who  is  not  wearied  out),  what  remedial 
measure  to  re-enable  life  in  the  man  did  the  entry 
of  the  Christ  import  ?”  My  answer  has  been  that 
Christ  the  Son  restored  man  as  God  the  Father  had 
made  and  sustained  him,  by  causing  a  self-inter¬ 
change  or  communion  of  the  divine  and  the  human 
nature,  that  is,  by  causing  life.  But  what  did  the 
Redeemer  need  to  do  which  the  Creator  had  not  done  ? 
The  Father  worketh  hitherto  and  the  Son  works: 
What  is  the  specific  difference  in  the  working  of  the 
Son  ? 

We  name  that  difference  when  we  confess  the 
Incarnation,  the  historic  Incarnation.  The  Son 
worked  and  works  the  Atonement  by  being  Jesus, 
by  doing  the  things  which  Jesus  did.  What  are 
these  things?  Rot  the  good  tidings,  not  the  signs 
a  greater  an(^  wonders,  not  the  going  about  doing  good, 
than  the  not  the  holy  example,  if  these  things  had 
been  all,  as  to  some  people  they  seem  to  be 
all  in  the  account  of  the  Christ.  For  again  the 
death  upon  the  cross,  in  which  others  find  the  ac- 


THE  LAMB  OF  GOD 


77 


count  of  Christus  Bedemptor,  if  that  had  been  the 
end  of  all.  The  deed  of  Jesus  which  atoned  was  not 
the  cross.  The  cross  did  not  at-one  J  esus  himself.  It 
was  a  sacrifice  hut  not  an  atoning  sacrifice,  a  life 
lost  indeed  but,  if  the  dead  ended  there,  not  found. 
The  sacrifice  that  makes  life  must  be  a  mutual  sac¬ 
rifice,  a  gift  of  self  exchanged  between  Two.  The 
cross  was  Jesus’  gift  of  self,  the  Father’s  gift  was 
the  Besurrection.  Life  given  was  received  again  not 
a  hundredfold  but  with  infinitude.  There  was  inter¬ 
change  of  time  and  eternity,  flesh  and  spirit.  The 
sacrifice  had  been  laid  upon  the  altar  and  the  Lord 
that  is  the  God  had  answered  by  the  fire.  In  that 
flame  of  sacrifice,  earth  and  heaven  mingled  and  were 
one.  The  At-one-ment  was  wrought,  and  it  was  the 
work  of  Jesus,  the  Man. 

Ho  sooner  is  that  last  word  said  than  one’s  ear  is 
smitten  by  the  rebuke  that  such  a  word  in  such  a 
place  is  a  betrayal  of  the  Christian’s  faith,  that  the 
man  Jesus  was  also  Christ  the  Son  even  while  He 
still  agonised  on  the  tree  of  death. 

Let  the  righteous  smite  me  friendly.  They  will 
if  they  consider  again  my  whole  thought  in  this. 
Their  creed  that  Jesus  is  God  is  mine  as  firmly  as 
it  is  theirs;  but  not  less  firmly  than  they  I  believe 
that  Jesus  is  both  God  and  Man.  What  He  is  as 
God  is  for  me,  and  I  think  for  them,  a  matter  only 
of  distant  and  weak  apprehension,  “pursuing  but 
faint” ;  what  He  is  as  Man  may  become,  if  I  pursue, 
a  matter  almost  of  comprehension.  Being  myself 


78 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


man  I  hope  to  know  in  some  strong  sense  of  knowl¬ 
edge  what  the  Man  J esus  was  and  is.  And  if  I  can 
know  this,  also  I  must.  This  is  the  knowledge  which 
is  most  necessary  for  my  soul’s  health,  since  it  is 
by  being  Man  that  the  Son  of  God  saves  that  soul 
alive,  and  indeed  is  to  this  mortal  a  concern  at  all. 
What  shall  it  profit  a  man  to  gain  the  whole  world 
of  that  which  can  be  known  even  of  heaven  and  the 
heavenly,  and  to  lose  his  own  soul?  What  indeed! 

Besides  he  who  reveals  the  Father,  only  he  can 
The  pro-  reveal  the  Son.  And  this  revealer  is  Jesus, 

cess  of  the  ^  c  i\r 

Atone-  feon  ox  Man. 

ment.  With  that  deprecation  I  go  forward.  I 
am  to  discern  if  I  may  the  process  of  this  Atonement, 
by  what  manner  of  action  Jesus  makes  men  live.  The 
process  must  be  sought  where  it  is  most  discernible, 
that  is,  in  history.  And  first  I  have  to  remember 
that  the  Atonement,  if  it  was  fully  accomplished  only 
in  the  Passing  of  Jesus,  did  not  begin  in  that  mo¬ 
ment.  The  whole  mortal  passage  in  which,  like 
every  child  of  man,  “from  the  great  deep  to  the 
great  deep  he  goes,”  was  already  the  redeeming  ac¬ 
tion.  The  prophet  of  Nazareth  drew  to  Him  a 
Peter  and  his  brethren,  a  Magdalene  and  her  sister 
Maries,  and  an  atonement  went  on  for  these,  for  a 
life  came  to  them  and  was  taking  away  their  sins. 
This  life  in  them  was  caused  by  the  life  in  Him, 
the  fact  which  we  describe  sometimes  as  an  obedience 
to  the  divine  Will,  sometimes  as  a  communion  with, 
sometimes  a  sacrifice  to  the  Father — change  of  meta- 


THE  LAMB  OF  GOD 


79 


phors  to  which  I  have  ventured  to  add  one  of  my 
own,  a  Self-Interchange  of  Christ  and  God.  But  how 
did  life  in  Jesus  make  life  to  be  in  other  men? 
Can  we  analyse  this  more  closely  ? 

We  must  not  content  ourselves  with  interpreta¬ 
tions  which  have  been  in  use.  To  say  that  Jesus 
is  the  Second  Adam,  that  humanity  is  summed  up 
in  Him,  or  that  He  is  the  Representative  Man,  and  to 
think  we  are  explaining  the  fact,  is  to  deceive  our¬ 
selves  and  to  mistake  words  for  things.  Will  it  be 
only  a  word  and  not  a  word  which  brings  nearer  the 
thing,  if  I  say  that  Jesus  communicated  life  to  others 
in  the  way  in  which  life  is  propagated  Birth  in 
throughout  all  natural  existence.  The  living  Nature  and 
creature,  if  it  be  no  higher  than  a  herb,  does 
not  cause  the  life  of  a  new  creature,  but  only  occasions 
that  life  to  be.  It  does  a  certain  act  of  living,  and 
upon  the  doing  of  it  the  new  life  springs.  Whether 
this  act  be  in  the  asexual  or  the  sexual  zone  of  genera¬ 
tion  makes  no  difference.  Where  a  new  individual 
is  produced  by  fission  or  other  sexless  propagation 
there  the  original  living  thing  only  occasions  not 
causes  that  independent  beginning.  It  casts  off  a 
portion  of  its  organism  into  the  environment.  This 
act  of  detachment  is  a  vital  act  done  between  itself 
and  the  encompassing  soil  or  water  in  which  the  slip 
is  planted;  for  there  is  an  interchange  in  which  the 
mother  plant  gives  of  its  substance  to  the  soil  and 
the  soil  renders  its  own  in  nutriment  to  that  substance 
of  the  plant  which  has  been  detached  from  it.  But 


80 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


now,  that  mother  plant  has  only  given  occasion  to  the 
offspring:  the  slip  of  living  matter  must  by  its  own 
effort  use  the  occasion,  must  minister  to  itself,  by  its 
own  energy  help  itself  to  live,  must  strike  root  and 
effect  with  the  soil  a  mutual  incorporation. 

In  the  zone  of  sex-production  the  power  which 
begins  a  new  flower  upon  the  sod  is  an  act  more 
distinctly  of  parentage  by  union  of  one  seminal 
particle  and  another,  which  thus  becomes  for  the 
first  its  point  of  contact  and  intermingling  with 
its  world.  Man’s  natural  life  is  propagated  no 
otherwise  than  the  flower’s.  Let  the  analogy  of 
Birth  of  nature  interpret  to  us  the  work  of  grace  in 
Soul  is  as  the  propagation  of  the  life  spiritual. 

I  conceive  then  of  the  propagation  by 
Jesus  of  the  life  of  soul  in  His  disciples  as  compar¬ 
able  in  the  order  of  the  process  to  the  parentage  by 
which  life  is  generated  on  the  lower  level  of  the  physi¬ 
cal.  That  vital  energy  of  His  being  by  which  He 
made  the  interchange  of  self  with  the  Father,  that 
life-long  communion  perfected  in  the  Passion,  made 
the  occasion,  the  opportunity,  on  which  the  human 
spirit  of  a  disciple  woke  into  consciousness  of  the 
Divine  Spirit  and  by  an  effort  of  union  came  alive. 
As  man  is  brought  into  the  world  of  nature  by  the 
mysterious  vital  act  called  birth,  where  a  germ  of 
human-kind  has  been  quickened  by  the  vital  act 
called  parentage,  so  is  he  born  into  the  world  of 
grace.  Life  starts  in  his  soul  at  the  mystic  shock 
of  life  in  another  which  pulsates  beside  him.  Jesus, 


THE  LAMB  OF  GOD 


81 


in  all  moments  of  His  mortal  existence,  lived  unto 
God,  and  at  this  moment  or  at  that  some  follower’s 
soul  woke  at  the  pulse-beat  from  a  pre-natal  sleep, 
and  lived.  In  no  metaphor  said  Jesus  to  Hicodemus 
that  a  man  must  be  born  again  if  he  shall  enter  the 
kingdom  of  heaven.  Spiritual  birth  is  no  figure 
drawn  from  fleshly  birth,  it  is  one  fact  with  it.  That 
which  is  born  of  the  flesh  is  flesh,  and  of  spirit  spirit ; 
the  two  that  are  born  are  diverse,  the  bearing  of  the 
two  is  one. 

Can  I  clothe  this  abstract  law  of  creation  with 
the  concrete,  with  the  historic  experience  of  those 
first  disciples  ?  How  did  the  life  come  to  a  birth  in 
one  of  these;  how  (to  use  more  conventional  terms) 
was  Simon  Peter  “converted,”  how  were  John  and 
James  made  Christians? 

In  grace  as  in  nature  the  birth-fact  is  closely 
veiled  from  view.  The  record  of  the  making  of 
disciples  brings  us  no  nearer  to  it  than  the  knowl¬ 
edge  that  when  Jesus  began  to  preach  the  Kingdom 
of  God  certain  men  and  women  out  of  a  multitude 
whose  minds  had  been  roused  to  attention  entered 
into  more  intimacy  with  this  teacher,  came  under 
the  spell  of  His  person,  and  in  the  event  attained 
to  the  belief  that  in  that  personality  the  secret  of 
human  fate  was  disclosed  and  the  power  to  realise 
that  fate  was  ministered.  “Thou  art  the  Christ,” 
“Thou  hast  the  words  of  eternal  life,”  “Lord,  I  will 
follow  thee  even  to  prison  and  to  death,”  said  Peter, 
and  likewise  said  they  all. 


82 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Shall  we  content  ourselves  with  assigning  the  con¬ 
version  of  these  people  to  the  force  of  the  teaching 
and  the  example  of  Jesus,  or  again  of  a  personal 
magnetism  in  the  prophet?  Surely  we  must  go  on 
to  ask  why  the  truths  taught,  the  conduct  mani¬ 
fested,  the  attraction  exerted,  caused  belief,  obedi¬ 
ence,  devotion.  For  we  must  not  take  for  granted, 
as  we  commonly  have  done,  that  truth  must  con¬ 
vince,  goodness  compel  imitation,  beauty  of  spirit 
attract.  Plainly  that  did  not  happen  to  any  but  a 
few  even  of  those  who  came  within  the  spell,  and 
many  of  those  who  stood  without  it  were  not  attracted 
but  repelled  and  antagonised.  There  ought  then  to 
be  some  hearing  for  the  interpretation  I  am  trying 
to  frame  for  my  own  assistance,  for  it  rests  upon 
facts  of  human  nature  already  in  some  measure  as¬ 
certained,  and  now  coming  fast  under  a  steadier  and 
more  penetrating  light. 

That  which  Jesus  taught  and  acted  was  the  Mutual 
Sacrifice  of  God  and  Man.  He  preached 
Mutual  that  “he  that  loseth  his  life  shall  find  it.”  He 
Sacrifice  exampled  it  by  obedience  to  the  F ather’s  will 

in  Jesus.  L  J 

even  unto  death;  at  the  last  He  steadfastly 
set  His  face  to  go  to  Jerusalem,  He  prayed  that  the 
cup  might  pass,  and  not  passing  drank  it  to  the  lees. 

This  was  His  communion  or  self-interchange  with 
the  Father,  His  offer  of  self-sacrifice;  in  our  chosen 
word  it  was  the  act  of  life  unto  God  as  rendered 
from  His  side.  This  life  was  lived  in  the  sight 
and  touch  of  His  disciples:  the  pulse  of  it  beat 


THE  LAMB  OF  GOD 


83 


against  their  own  heart-heats;  therenpon  the  same 
pulse  of  life  woke  in  them.  The  birth  of  the  life 
eternal  was  on  that  wise.  This  interpretation  must 
for  me  take  the  place  of  all  the  older  renderings  of 
the  truth  with  which  we  have  satisfied  ourselves 
hitherto.  Christ  did  not  save  His  disciples’  souls 
by  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount,  or  that  in  the  Upper 
Hoorn,  by  His  “going  about  doing  good,”  by  His 
signs  and  wonders ;  no,  nor  by  an  expiation  wrought 
through  vicarious  sacrifice  on  the  bitter  tree.  He 
saved  them,  these  men  whose  names  and  deeds  we 
know,  not  by  the  letting  His  light  of  wisdom  shine 
and  His  wTorks  of  mercy  be  done  before  men,  but 
by  letting  His  life  be  lived  before  them  where  the 
breath  and  the  beat  of  it  would  vibrate  on  their 
spirits  and  provoke  a  life  like  itself  to  waken  and 
live  in  them. 


CHAPTER  VIII 


THE  TELEPATHIES  OF  WAR 

Lahgton  came  to  tea  this  afternoon,  and,  after  he 
had  got  me  alone,  asked  if  I  had  “done  any  more” 
since  onr  talk,  or  did  I  find  it  impossible  to  think 
about  anything  except  the  war.  I  said  that  I 
hoped  I  had  made  a  beginning,  and  the  war  seemed 
not  to  hinder  but  help.  “You  know,  Langton,  it 
feels  to  me  that  there  is  a  wonderful  new  movement 
stirring  in  our  minds.  When  the  war  began  we  all 
were  thinking  how  it  would  bring  reality  into  our 
religion.  But  did  one  guess  how  real  a  reality  ?  .  .  . 
a  vision  of  What  do  you  make  of  these  soldiers’  tales 
Angels.  that  come  -[n  after  the  first  fightings,  the 
apparitions  on  the  battlefield,  the  white  horsemen 
which  enemy  prisoners  say  they  saw  at  the  side  of 
our  men,  the  unaccountable  frustration  of  an  assault 
of  their  cavalry  on  us,  as  if  something  barred  the 
way  ?” 

Langton  said  he  would  like  to  hear  what  I  thought 
about  it. 

“I  am  trying  to  think.  One  may  smile  at  the 
soldier  who  tells  you  there  were  angels  on  the  field, 
like  the  one  who  stopped  the  beast  Balaam  rode. 

84 


THE  TELEPATHIES  OF  WAR 


85 


But  one’s  smile  might  be  as  well  bestowed  on  the 
superior  people  who  say  the  tales  are  rubbish.  Of 
the  two  the  simple  man  is  nearer  the  truth,  just 
as  the  ass  was  nearer  the  fact  than  Balaam.  There 
was  something  in  the  way  of  the  prophet,  though 
not  an  angel  with  a  sword ;  and  something  was  there 
between  our  army  and  ruin,  though  in  my  view  not 
a  white  horseman. 

“A  story  which  has  not  got  into  print  suggests 
to  me  an  interpretation  of  these  occurrences.  In 
the  late  autumn  there  was  a  night  attack  on  our 
thinly  manned  trenches  which  failed  in  a  strange 
way.  Our  men  held  their  fire.  The  enemy  charged 
to  within  a  few  yards,  stopped,  set  up  a  yell,  and 
fled  back  to  their  trenches.  Did  they  see  our  re¬ 
serves  coming  up  ?  Ho,  there  was  not  a  motion  any¬ 
where.  One  of  our  people  went  to  the  next  trench, 
found  an  officer  standing  there,  in  a  kind  of  tranced 
condition,  and  asked :  ‘Do  you  know  what  made  the 
Germans  do  like  that?’  ‘Yes,  I  seemed  to  see  why. 
For  I  looked  along  your  trench  and  I  saw  ranks  of 
white  shining  figures  in  front  of  you.  I  think 
the  Germans  saw  it,  and  that  was  what  scared 
them.’ 

“How  I  have  this  idea  about  it,  Langton.  It  was 
telepathy.  Those  Germans  had  the  ‘white  horse¬ 
men’  belief  in  them.  (We  know  from  prisoners 
that  some  of  them  have  it,  got  from  the  Russians, 
who  certainly  profess  it;  it  is  a  belief  as  ancient 
as  Lake  Regillus,  and  Spaniards  in  Mexico  saw  S. 


86 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


James  on  a  white  horse.)  Well,  one  or  other  of 
those  German  linesmen  as  he  ran  towards  his  death 
saw  white  horsemen,  where  there  was  nothing,  or 
nothing  he  could  have  seen.  Perhaps  he  cried  out, 
or  his  silent  fear  infected  others  with  a  panic.  So 
they  turned  and  ran.  But  how  of  the  English¬ 
man  and  his  ‘shining  ranks’  ?  He  was  wondering 
at  the  conduct  of  the  enemy,  and  so  was  in  some 
relation  of  mental  sympathy  with  them ;  this 
made  possible  a  thought-transference  from  them 
to  him.  What  they  saw,  he  saw ;  hut  he  saw  accord¬ 
ing  to  his  lights,  I  mean,  his  recipiency.  In  his 
mind  there  were  no  white  horsemen,  hut  perhaps 
the  horsemen  of  Dothan  were  there,  and  he  re¬ 
shaped  them  into  the  supernatural  infantry,  more 
wanted  than  cavalry  in  trench-fighting.  It  was  a 
case  of  telepathic  vision,  of  a  somewhat  complex 
kind;  it  was  like  the  seeing  of  a  wraith,  except  that 
the  mind  which  raised  the  vision  to  the  seer  of  it 
was  not  the  mind  of  a  man  dying  or  dead.  And  I 
suppose - ■” 

Langton  broke  in  with,  “But  don’t  you  think  there 
may  have  been  something  there, — not  shining  figures 
like  soldiers,  but  something  ?” 

Reality  in  “Yes,  I  do.  The  Divine  Reality  was 
vision.  there.  But  that  is  everywhere,  one  knows. 
The  Reality  was  saving  our  men  in  the  trench,  neither 
by  horse  nor  foot,  however,  hut  by  a  thought  in  the 
breast  of  mortals,  that  thought  which  made  the  vision 
which  scared  the  enemy’s  charge. 


THE  TELEPATHIES  OF  WAR 


87 


“Now  this  story  it  is  that  has  set  me  thinking 
about  a  new  movement  started  in  our  minds  by 
the  war.  It  is  this  new  science  of  telepathy.  That 
is  a  region  of  human  nature  which  we  are  beginning 
to  discover.  Already  there  is  a  science  of  it,  for 
we  know  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  transference  of 
one  man’s  thought  to  another  man’s  mind,  though 
the  cause  of  it  we  do  not  know.  Years  back  I  had 
a  talk  about  this  with  my  cousin  at  Carleford,  and 
asked  him  if  there  was  not  a  new  time  in  theology 
coming  out  of  this  research.  Langton,  it  is  not 
coming;  it’s  come.  Oh  how  perfectly  sure  I  am 
of  it!  A  new,  new  time,  like  the  time  when  we 
found  the  earth  was  not  the  centre  of  the  universe, 
and  ‘all  creation  widened  on  man’s  view.’  Then 
we  had  to  reconstruct  all  that  much  of  theology 
which  thought  the  world  turned  around  upon  our 
little  star.  But  this  discovery  is  far,  far  greater 
than  the  Copernican.  That  was  a  discovery  in 
solar  mechanics  only,  this  telepathy,  when  we 
really  get  hold  of  it,  is  a  discovery  of  laws  of  spirit. 
To  know  that  the  earth  goes  round  the  sun 
made  the  world  wondrously  bigger,  but  made 
man  seem,  not  be,  wondrously  smaller.  But  to 
know  that  my  mind  can  go  across  half  the  earth 
surface,  say  from  England  to  New  Zealand,  and 
there  create  a  force  on  another  mind,  why,  it  prom¬ 
ises  to  make  the  world  small  again  and  my  mind 
greater  beyond  all  measurement.  Now  is  it  not 
likely  our  theologic  systems  will  have  to  expand, 


88 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


or  else  burst  like  old  wine-skins?  This  telepathy 
is  going  to  make  all  things  new  in  theology.  In 
theology,  I  mean”  (for  here  Langton  looked  a  little 
disconcerted),  “not  in  religion;  it  will  make  no  dif¬ 
ference  to  our  faith,  but  all  the  difference  to  the 
language  of  faith ;  it  will  re-name  the  old  terms  and 
categories  and  re-forge  the  formulas.  Yes,  gravi¬ 
tation  set  the  theologians  hard  at  work  on  repair 
and  reconstruction,  and  a  greater  than  gravitation 
is  here.” 

I  pulled  up,  ashamed  as  if  I  had  been  betrayed 
into  a  youthful  boastfulness  in  the  presence  of  this 
old  and  reverend  friend;  that  “quiet  old  Trac- 
tarian  face”  seemed  anxious  to  give  me  sympathy 
but  not  to  be  ready  with  it.  I  began  to  remember  how 
to  the  men  of  his  generation  and  school  “psychic  phe¬ 
nomena”  of  all  orders  were  alike  classed  as  “spirit¬ 
ualistic,”  and  therefore  all  suspected  of  illegitimacy, 
and  of  “forcing  a  door  intentionally  closed.”  Can  any 
good  thing,  such  as  a  new  theologic  thought, 
good^Mng  come  out  of  telepathy,  second  cousin  of  spirit- 
come  out  ua]ism — that  I  say  not,  of  necromancy,  as 
some  do  when  they  hear  talk  about  a  new 
telepathy  of  the  “Disearnate.”  Perhaps  Langton  has 
not  heard  that  talk.  JSTo  need  for  me  to  tell  him  of 
it,  for  it  is  only  with  the  telepathy  of  the  living  that 
my  concern  is.  At  least  for  the  present.  There  one 
is  on  the  firm  earth  of  simple  nature  and  her  laws. 
That  telepathy  may  be  as  I  called  it  a  greater  than 
gravitation,  but  it  is  every  bit  as  natural;  it  is  a 


THE  TELEPATHIES  OF  WAR 


89 


proper  pasture  for  the  scientist,  not  the  hunting- 
ground  of  the  visionary  or  the  crank. 

What  Langton  said  about  it  was  that  the  matter 
was  very  new  and  interesting,  though  it  was  a  little 
beyond  him.  “But  you  set  me  thinking,  Desmond; 
and  I  must  get  another  talk  with  you  some  day.” 


l 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  ATONEMENT  AND  TELEPATHY 

> 

How  I  must  try  to  make  good  that  confident  word 
I  ventured  with  Langton,  that  this  new  science  of 
Telepathy  is  going  to  make  things  new  in  theology. 
Pace  to  face  with  that  sancta  simplicitas  of  an  age 
that  is  passing  I  felt  my  exhilaration  in  an  impulse 
of  new  thought  somewhat  chastened.  Perhaps  a 
Gnostic  lecturer  expanding  in  his  transcendental 
theme  and  suddenly  discovering  among  his  audience 
the  calm  illumined  countenance  of  some  veteran 
disciple  of  St.  John  might  have  felt  rebuked  as  I. 
Was  my  crude  ambitious  speculation  a  rough  tres¬ 
passer  on  sacred  reserves  ?  It  may  seem  so  to 
persons  of  Langton’s  school.  For  I  call  up,  by  the 
mere  name  of  “telepathic”  or  “psychical,”  associa¬ 
tions  sinister  to  their  mind  of  thinkings  and  prac- 
tisings  which  are  under  ban.  If  rebellion  is  as  the 
sin  of  witchcraft,  they  would  say,  then  witchcraft 
must  be  rebellion  against  what  is  right  in  faith 
and  practice;  that  is  why  a  Roman  pastor  always 
and  an  Anglican  very  often  will  bid  his  flock  to 
keep  away  from  “spiritualism” :  it  is,  he  tells  them, 
old  witchcraft  writ  long. 


90 


THE  ATONEMENT  AND  TELEPATHY  91 


Well,  it  is  not  spiritualism  that  I  want  to  speak 
of;  but  some  good  pastor  will  think  it  is, — unless 
he  gives  me  time  to  make  myself  understood,  and 
persuade  him  that  the  thing  I  ask  his  attention  for 
might  as  truthfully  be  called  by  the  contrasting  name 
of  naturalism. 

So,  ending  hesitation,  I  ask  my  fellow-believer 
in  the  Divine  Christ  to  look  with  me  at  this  class 
of  natural  facts,  provisionally  called  Telepathy,  or 
with  more  accuracy  thought-transference,  facts 
that  lie  on  the  border  of  the  known  and  unknown. 
This  need  not  mean  the  border  of  natural  and  spiri¬ 
tual,  though  I  do  indeed  anticipate  that  the  facts 
will  he  found  to  lie  upon  that  line  and  on  either 
side  of  it.  I  am  expecting  that  this  may  lead  us 
to  a  conception  of  how  Jesus  takes  away  the  sin 
of  the  world  more  illuminative  than  any  of  which 
theology  has  had  the  use,  and  with  light  enough 
for  us  to  walk  by  till  some  fuller  clearness  puts  this 
out  in  turn. 

The  bearing  of  telepathy  upon  religion.  I  The  part  of 
want  to  examine  this.  Upon  all  religion,  all  telepathy 
doctrine,  all  churchmanship,  in  good  time,  mrcll&10n* 
if  I  can ;  but  immediately  upon  what  is  first  and  last 
and  midmost  in  religion,  the  bearing  of  telepathic 
fact  upon  the  method  of  salvation,  its  part  in  the 
redemptive  plan  and  process,  telepathy  as  the  instru¬ 
ment  by  which  Jesus  of  Nazareth  gave  life  to  the 
souls  of  men,  while  He  was  with  them  in  the  days  of 
His  flesh. 


92 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


One  can  claim  for  this  hypothesis  what  a  while 
ago  would  have  been  denied  it,  that  it  is  what  an 
hypothesis  ought  to  he  if  the  scientific  are  to  give 
it  a  hearing.  It  is  a  vera  causa .  Ho  one  who  need 
he  listened  to  will,  I  suppose,  at  this  date  reject 
thought-transference  as  a  fact  in  the  world.  The 
thing  which  one  man  thinks  or  feels  or  dreams,  is 
able  to  be  thought  or  felt  or  dreamt  at  the  same 
time  or  in  brief  sequence  by  another  man  separated 
by  even  a  wide  interval  of  space  or  by  an  interval 
unbridged  by  any  medium  of  communication  as 
yet  discernible.  The  thing  which  one  man  wills 
is  able  to  get  executed  by  the  will  of  another  simi¬ 
larly  out  of  contact  or  communication.  Once  we 
supposed  the  few  cases  observed  to  be  mere  coinci¬ 
dences.  Coincidence  cannot  be  the  account  of 
incidents  which  happen  by  the  thousand,  have 
been  examined  by  rigorous  method  of  inductive 
science,  and  present  themselves  with  frequency  to 
unprofessional  observation  in  almost  any  household 
of  the  intelligent.  Here  is  a  natural  fact,  well 
ascertained  in  gross  though  not  yet  in  detail.  There 
is  a  law  of  nature  by  which  thought  in  one  man 
becomes  thought  in  another,  but  a  law  of  which  the 
workings  cannot  be  further  formulated  at  present, 
though  formulation  may  arrive  now  at  any  time.  For 
the  present  purpose  one  need  not  wait  for  this  exacter 
knowledge  of  particulars;  the  large  fact  serves  us. 
If  there  is  a  telepathy  for  mind  and  will,  how  will 
there  not  be  a  telepathy  for  the  soul  ?  If  a  thought 


THE  ATONEMENT  AND  TELEPATHY  93 


of  mine,  grave  or  trivial,  concerning  the  things  of 
this  life  makes  a  friend  or  a  stranger  think  the  same ; 
if  a  purpose  of  his  sets  me  on  to  further  it;  then 
as  surely  if  one  of  us  has  seen  a  vision  of  the  holier 
realities  or  yielded  to  the  impulse  of  a  beneficence 
or  a  venture  of  faith,  the  other’s  eyes  may  be  opened 
to  the  vision  or  his  hand  prompted  to  the  deed.  This 
has  but  to  he  said  to  be  accepted;  who-  Faith_ 
ever  admits  the  transference  of  mundane  transfer- 
thought  and  action,  concedes  a  transference 
of  faith,  which  is  but  the  exercise  of  the  same 
thought  and  will  upon  the  same  objects,  but  in 
relation  to  a  wider  and  more  enduring  inter¬ 
est.  He  will  be  ready  to  believe  that  Jesus 
Christ  could  convey  life  to  the  men  and  women  who 
companied  with  Him  by  a  faith-transference,  a  telep¬ 
athy  of  spirit.  If,  in  the  case  of  that  group  of  con¬ 
temporary  followers,  there  was  no  distance  of  space 
between  agent  and  recipient,  the  action  was  not 
the  less  telepathic.  The  word  imports  no  doubt 
the  idea  of  interval,  but  an  interval  which  need  not 
be  measurable  by  space.  It  is  enough  that  the 
bridge  of  transition  be  imperceptible;  the  length  of 
its  span  is  nothing.  A  thought-transference  is  a 
telepathy,  if  it  only  cross  the  breadth  of  a  hearth 
between  one  silent  sitter  and  another.  Across  just 
such  an  interval  the  faith  of  Jesus  transferred 
itself  to  a  companion.  The  motions  of  His  all- 
pure  intelligence  and  all-devoted  will,  expressed 
in  speech  and  conduct  or  even  unexpressed,  were 


94 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


not  reabsorbed  witbin  Him  nor  exhaled  in  the 
air;  they  went  out  of  Him  as  virtue,  their  vibration 
struck  upon  souls  around  Him,  and  where  these 
were  attuned  to  receive  the  vibration  life  started  in 
them  at  the  shock. 

Here  then  is  the  hypothesis  I  shall  put 


A  hypo¬ 
thesis  of  forward  of  the  law  by  which  Christ  worked 
the  process 

of  Atone¬ 
ment. 


an  atonement  while  He  was  in  the  flesh.  He 
atoned  the  men  and  women  who  were  in  His 
fellowship  by  the  means  which  alone  can  take  away 
sin,  the  impartment  of  life.  This  impartment  of  the 
spiritual  life  was,  in  the  method  of  it,  the  same 
operation  of  creative  power  as  is  the  propagation  of 
physical  life.  By  living  the  life  of  a  perfect  com¬ 
munion  or  self-interchange  with  God  the  Creator, 
J esus  occasioned  the  thing  which  only  the  Creator  can 
cause y  the  waking  of  a  human  soul  into  the  like 
communion  of  interchange  with  the  Source  of  all 
Being,  God.  This  occasioning  of  the  life  of  spirit 
in  men  is  the  same  operation  as  the  occasioning  of 
the  life  in  a  physical  organism ;  for  there  the  parent 
does  not  give  the  life  it  possesses  in  itself,  but  only 
by  a  specific  energy  of  that  vitality  provokes  a 
potential  and  latent  vitality  of  an  existing  germ  to 
become  actual,  to  strike  root  downward  and  bear  fruit 
upward.  The  spiritual  propagation  is  doubtless 
less  easy  to  image  distinctly  than  the  fleshly, 
but  an  interpretative  image  is  in  these  days 
presented  for  our  service  in  the  law  of  telepathy 
or  thought-transference  which  is  being  shadowed 


THE  ATONEMENT  AND  TELEPATHY  95 


out  bj  research.  The  motions  of  the  intelligence 
and  the  will  where  they  deal  with  the  concerns  of 
time  and  space  do  somehow  repeat  themselves  in 
personalities  other  than  that  in  which  they  have 
originated.  My  hypothesis  then  is  that  the  same 
thing  happens  when  the  concerns  which  occupy  the 
being  of  a  man  are  not  fleshly  but  spiritual,  not 
temporal  but  eternal,  are  not  situate  in  the  narrow 
environment  round  a  mortal  organism  but  in  the 
Marge  room”  in  which  the  Creator  has  set  the  feet 
of  a  soul.  By  the  exercise  of  such  a  telepathy  of 
the  super-sensible ,  J esus — not  as  the  Son  of  God  but 
as  the  Son  of  Man  and  in  His  human  existence — 
brought  about  the  vital  union  of  His  disciples  with 
His  Father  and  their  Father;  this  union  was  life 
unto  God,  and  by  the  life  unto  God  their  sins  were 
taken  away.  Thus  I  declare  the  tenet  of  the  Atone¬ 
ment  as  my  own  mind  can  receive  it  for  a  light,  my 
own  will  embrace  it  as  a  power.  A  light  and  a 
power  I  do  find  it  to  be. 

It  is  as  yet  an  hypothesis  this  of  mine ;  hypo 
but  a  strong  one.  For  first  it  is,  as  I  have  thesis  is  a 

.  .  ,  ^  -j-  vera  causa. 

claimed,  a  vera  causa .  It  supposes  a  cause 
which  is  a  thing  in  the  world ;  there  is  in  nature  this 
reality,  a  man  can  under  certain  at  present  ill-ex¬ 
plored  conditions  bring  it  about  that  a  brother  man 
shall  live,  in  his  reflective  and  active  faculties,  the 
same  life  of  a  human  spirit  which  the  first  is  living. 
If  the  universe  is  truly  one  it  almost  is  a  postulate 
of  reason  that  the  highest  life  of  human-kind  is  oper- 


96 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


ated  by  the  same  machinery  that  operates  the  mode 
of  existence  next  below  it  in  the  scale. 

In  the  organism  of  the  natural  man  all  the 
mechanism  and  vitalism  of  the  animal  is  taken  up 
and  elaborated  into  the  mechanics  and  vitality  of 
man’s  mental  organisation,  so  that  the  same  general 
laws  regulate  the  new  specific  functions,  and  the 
higher  creature  has  all  that  the  lower  has,  and  also 
that  which  is  his  own.  In  spiritual  man  the  raising 
and  refining  of  powers  is  carried  further ;  the 
animality  and  the  humanity  are  there,  but  they 
are  worked  up  into  spirituality.  It  is  inconceiv¬ 
able  that  the  subtlest  of  all  the  organic  laws,  this 
energy  of  mind  at  which  we  aim  the  word  Telepathy 
should  be  an  exception  to  the  rule,  and  not  accom¬ 
pany  man  as  an  endowment  when  he  crosses  the  hori¬ 
zon  from  the  intellectual  existence  into  the  spiritual. 

That  becomes  only  the  more  incredible  when  the 
human  nature  contemplated  is  that  of  J esus  of 
ISTazareth,  for  whom  the  claim  is  made  that  He  is 
the  Life.  For  Telepathy ,  the  common  telepathy  of 
science,  is  an  energy  of  life.  It  is  (to  give  my  own 
assured  belief,  whether  scientists  share  it  or  no)  a 
reciprocity  of  two  factors,  like  every  other  vital  re¬ 
sponse  to  environment.  A  self-interchange  takes 
place  between  telepathiser  and  telepathised.  To  con¬ 
ceive  of  the  transmitter  as  only  active  and  the  recipi¬ 
ent  as  only  passive  is  a  vulgar  error ;  mind  must  meet 
mind,  will  energise  with  will,  if  a  transference  is  to 


THE  ATONEMENT  AND  TELEPATHY  97 


happen.  It  may  be,  and  commonly  perhaps  is,  that 
neither  agent  is  aware  of  the  other ;  but  the  new  study 
of  the  sub-conscious  makes  it  not  difficult  to  imagine 
that  the  intercourse  can  take  place  without  an  aware¬ 
ness  of  it.  If  then  telepathy  itself  be  human  life  at 
its  subtlest  and  nearest  to  the  super-sensible,  it  is 
reasonable  to  expect  that  the  yet  more  mysterious 
life  comes  by  that  life-process  which  is  nearest  to  the 
bound  where  the  hnowable  passes  into  the  unknown. 

Ah,  and  further  yet  there  is  this  to  say. 

Of  the  known  telepathy  what  better  account  an^the^ 
can  be  at  present  offered  than  this — that  it  is  of 
a  manifestation  of  an  underlying  unity  of 
the  race  ?  When  some  of  the  researchers  suggest  that 
the  psychic  communications  over  wide  distances  im¬ 
ply  a  continuity  of  substance  more  ethereal  than  the 
ether  of  physical  speculation,  they  may  be  right  or 
wrong,  but  they  at  least  are  helping  us  to  imagine 
this  unity  by  a  sensible  figure,  which  one  may  hope 
we  shall  one  day  transcend.  By  this  figure’s  help  we 
imagine  how  a  movement  of  mental  force  in  one 
person  is  echoed  in  other  persons;  it  is  because  the 
mind  of  the  race  distributed  among  its  individual 
members  is  a  continuous  unity,  and  every  thrill  in 
it  must  travel  everywhere  throughout  its  area  as  the 
water-circle  round  a  stone  cast  in  a  pool.  We  de¬ 
clare  this  truth  in  excelsis  when  we  assert  the  telep¬ 
athy  of  souls.  We  profess  in  it  that  all  are  one  body 
in  Christ,  and  whether  one  member  suffer  or  enjoy 


98 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


all  the  members  enjoy  or  suffer  with  it;  we  confess, 
that  is,  the  principle  of  catholicity  and  of  salvation 
by  the  Church,  of  all  that  is  true  in  the  often  mis¬ 
read  maxim  Extra  ecclesiam  nulla  solus , 


CHAPTER  X 


THE  ATONER  IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH 

“ A  little  while  I  am  with  you.” 

The  hypothesis  then  has  been  put  forth :  Jesus  in  the 
days  of  His  flesh  made  atonement  for  men,  His 
contemporaries,  by  the  impartment  to  them  of  the 
life  nnto  God  through  the  medium  of  a  telepathy 
of  spirit.  Can  the  hypothesis  so  marshal,  order,  and 
unify  the  concrete  facts  it  offers  to  explain  as  to 
make  good  a  standing  as  a  theory  ? 

The  concrete  facts  that  can  be  ranged  at  all 
for  investigation  are  those  which  can  be  gathered 
from  the  Christian  documents,  and  these  facts  are 
few,  as  was  likely  in  a  brief  narrative  of  a  very 
brief  career.  Had  the  career  and  its  record  been 
long  the  muster  of  facts  could  not  have  been  con¬ 
siderable,  because  the  events  of  a  life-movement  in 
a  soul  or  between  soul  and  soul  cannot  be  them¬ 
selves  observed.  All  that  can  come  to  view  is  the 
accompanying  life-movement  in  the  field  of  the  sen¬ 
sible.  This  indeed  is  true,  I  take  it,  even  of  the 
physical  life;  but  certainly  the  spiritual  movement 
can  transpire  only  through  symptoms,  the  things  men 

99 


100 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


said  and  did  on  the  surface  of  themselves,  from 
which  may  be  inferred  a  cause  below  the  sur¬ 
face.  These  symptoms  must  be  few  where  the 
narrative  which  holds  their  memory  is  so  brief,  so 
objective,  so  little  analytic,  and  written  down  at 
such  a  distance  from  the  live  moments  it  records, 
as  is  the  narrative  of  Christ’s  temporal  career.  Yet 
not  so  very  few  in  proportion  to  the  fulness  of  the 
story  are  the  glimpses  which  can  be  caught  along 
the  story  of  a  power  in  Jesus  to  work  on  other  per¬ 
sons  effects  which  we  should  now  describe  as  psychic 
and  telepathic. 

To  gather  them  into  some  order  I  will  group  the 
indications  under  the  two  exhaustive  categories 
of  things  human,  man’s  knowing  and  doing,  the 
transference  of  thought  and  the  transference  of 
activity. 

I.  The  Transference  of  Thought 

Thought-transference  is  a  name  for  communica¬ 
tion  of  an  idea  either  from  the  side  of  the  agent  or 
of  the  recipient  of  a  motion:  there  is  thought-read¬ 
ing  when  the  idea  is  first  in  one’s  neighbour,  thought¬ 
writing  when  it  begins  in  oneself.  The  process 
is  the  same  in  both,  an  interaction  of  two 
minds,  which  may  be  conscious  on  the  side  of 
agent  only  or  recipient  only,  or  both  of  them  or  of 
neither.  The  former  process  is  the  more  easy  to 
study. 


IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  101 


(a)  The  Thought-reading  of  Jesus 

That  Jesus  did  read  the  unspoken  thoughts  of 
men  is  frequently  noted  in  the  tradition;  He  “per¬ 
ceived  their  thoughts/’  “knew  their  thoughts/’ 
“knew  what  was  in  men/’  “knew  who  should  betray 
him.”  Doubtless  this  is  evidence  given  by  unscien¬ 
tific  observers,  not  by  psychic  researchers.  But 
where  the  unscientific  bear  witness  to  occurrences 
of  a  kind,  which  the  later  science  finds  to  be  verifi¬ 
able  fact  in  its  own  day,  there  will  be  little  hesita¬ 
tion  in  accepting  the  early  witness.  On  the  same 
ground,  when  we  can  produce  instances  of  thought¬ 
reading  which  have  the  particularity  desired  by 
the  scientific  investigator,  as  we  can  on  resort  to 
the  Fourth  Gospel,  we  shall  feel  that  the  present 
controversy  as  to  the  historical  value  of  that  docu¬ 
ment  does  not  put  the  testimony  out  of  court.  When 
that  author  describes  with  precision  a  case  of 
thought-reading,  as  in  at  least  two  instances  he  does, 
we  shall  say  that  while  the  particulars  of  word  or 
action  remain  open  to  doubt,  the  general  fact  of 
the  power  in  Jesus  is  guaranteed  as  a  trustworthy 
tradition  among  his  followers.  The  relater  of  the 
scene  with  Nathanael  and  that  with  the  Samaritan 
woman  believed,  even  if  he  was  trusting  a  vague 
legend  of  his  church,  nay,  even  if  he  was  writing  an 
imagination  of  his  own,  that  such  incidents  could 
happen  to  Jesus,  as  those  who  had  known  Him 
knew. 


102 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


The  passage  with  Nathanael  is  not  explicit:  for 
what  was  it  that  happened  in  the  two  minds  when 
Jesus  saw  him  under  the  fig-tree  which  could  evoke 
the  “Rabbi,  thou  art  the  King  of  Israel’''  ?  But 
the  very  want  of  explicitness  in  the  allusion  of 
Jesus  is  a  note  of  authenticity  in  the  story.  Had 
it  been  invention,  would  not  the  logic  have  been 
more  visible,  should  we  not  have  been  clearly  told 
what  the  glance  of  Jesus  passing  by  had  signified 
to  the  man  under  the  fig-tree. 

The  passage  at  the  well  of  Sychem  is  one  of  a 
perspicuousness  to  gratify  a  modern  inquirer  into 
these  phenomena  of  mind.  The  mechanism  of  the 
interacting  minds  lays  itself  bare  to  us.  “Sir, 
give  me  this  water  .  .  .  that  I  come  not  hither 
to  draw.”  The  woman  thinks  of  the  long  bearing 
of  the  burden  from  well  to  cottage  door,  and  the 
mind  of  the  Rabbi  goes  that  journey  with  her, 
enters  with  her  the  door,  and  sees  with  her  the 
inmate  waiting  her,  the  husband.  “Go  call  him  and 
come  hither.”  Sadly  or  shamefacedly  comes  the 
reply,  “I  have  no  husband.”  Her  mind  envisages 
the  man  who  shares  her  roof,  and  reflects  the  vision 
on  the  mind  of  Jesus.  “Thou  hast  well  said,  I 
have  no  husband;”  .  .  .  His  eyes  peruse  her,  .  .  . 
“for  he  is  not  thy  husband.”  Backward  runs  her 
thought  up  the  avenue  of  her  ill  life,  and  the  Listen¬ 
er’s  goes  with  it,  and  the  events  are  numbered  out  to 
Him,  as  if  her  face  were  a  dial  registering  her  sin- 
nings  one  after  one.  “Thou  hast  had  .  .  .  five  hus- 


IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  103 


bands.”  Then  she  perceives  the  speaker  is  a  prophet, 
and  against  the  prophecy  which  reads  her  she  shuts 
a  window  by  the  prompt  diversion  to  the  national 
religious  problem,  “Our  fathers  worshipped  in 
this  mountain,”  and  presently  is  bidding  her  friends 
“come  see  a  man  who  told  me  all  that  ever  I 
did.” 

Bead  thus  the  tale  is  a  thought-reading  of  the  most 
familiar  character,  but  I  can  think  only  of  one 
instance  worthy  to  serve  for  comparison  in  so  sacred 
matter.  It  is  from  the  story  of  the  woman  whom 
Michelet  called  “The  Christ  of  France.”  Joan  is 
presented  to  Charles  vn.  in  his  Court  at  Chinon. 
She  impresses  him  at  once  by  discovering  him  though 
disguised  among  a  throng  of  courtiers,  and  presently 
converts  him  to  her  project  by  a  thought-reading, 
which  the  king  long  afterwards  authenticated  in 
confidence  to  an  intimate.  Let  me  give  the  incident 
as  I  have  seen  it  done  in  verse.  On  the  A  paralielt 
Maid’s  appeal  to  his  faith  in  God,  Charles, 
troubled  by  slanders  as  to  the  legitimacy  of  his  birth, 
asks  for  a  sign  to  confirm  her  message. 

Maid,  the  man 

Who  does  not  doubt  his  God  may  doubt  himself. 

Joan  ( starting  and  looking  fixedly  on  him). 

“May — doubt — himself.”  Ah!  then  I  see  it,  I  see. 

God  showed  your  face;  He  shows  to  me  your  heart. 

You  do  mistrust  yourself  the  heir  of  France. 


104 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Charles.  Ha!  sayest  thou,  maiden? 

Joan  {seizing  his  hand).  Stay,  and  hear  me  out. 

Now  is  it  borne  in  on  me  like  a  light. 

•  •••••• 

Yea,  this  it  was  when  at  the  feet  of  Christ  .  .  . 
Fallen  on  His  altar  stone  ...  in  the  lone  shrine  .  .  . 
Under  the  banner  of  your  fathers’  wars.  .  .  . 

Say  I  not  true?  Yes,  yes,  in  that  sharp  hour 
This  was  your  prayer,  that  of  His  pity  Christ 
Would  ease  you  of  a  realm  not  yours,  or  else 
Write  you  His  sure  Anointed  by  a  sign 
Not  to  be  questioned  more.  Behold!  He  heard. 
Behold!  His  sign  am  I.  Thou  art  the  King. 

Charles.  Maid,  I  am  overborne  and  borne  away 
By  a  great  wind  of  wonder.  .  .  .  Witness  Christ 
That  you  have  spelt  the  prayer  none  knew  but  He! 

“Come  listen/’  might  Charles  have  said,  “to  a 
maiden  who  has  told  me  the  thing  I  did  in  my 
most  secret  soul ;  is  not  this  the  Messenger  of 
God  P 

(b)  The  Thought-writing  of  Jesus 

But  if  Jesus  was  plainly  gifted  to  read  the  thoughts 
of  men,  only  less  plain  was  His  power  to  write  His 
own  upon  the  mind  of  another.  Why  did  the  Bap¬ 
tist  hail  the  young  prophet  whose  walk  passed  where 
“John  stood  and  two  of  his  disciples”  with  that 
mystic  utterance :  “Behold  the  Lamb  of  God”  ?  The 
word  has  been  an  enigma  to  us,  so  premature  a  con- 


IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  105 


fession  of  faith  it  sounds  when  the  sacrifice  of  the 
Christ  had  not  yet  dawned  on  the  mind  of  Israel. 
To  me  the  enigma  is.  solved,  if  I  may  believe  that 
the  sacrifice  of  the  Christ  had  dawned  already  on 
the  consciousness  of  the  Messiah  Himself,  “the  glori¬ 
ous  Eremite,”  newly  come  from  the  spiritual  ordeal 
of  the  wilderness;  that  the  thought  of  it,  kindled  on 
his  inner  mind,  conveyed  itself  without  to  John  in 
some  interpreting  light  of  “the  gospel  of  God  in  the 
face  of  Christ  Jesus.” 

I  would  venture  to  resolve  in  the  same  way  an¬ 
other  question  in  which  the  same  J ohn  is  con¬ 
cerned.  The  vision  which  followed  the  baptism  of 
Jesus,  was  it  to  Himself  only  or  also,  as  the  Fourth 
Gospel  would  inform  us,  to  the  Baptist?  How  har¬ 
monious  with  the  new  teachings  of  psychology  it  is 
to  understand  that  the  vision  was  to  Jesus,  the  reflec¬ 
tion  of  it  to  John. 

Or  the  Transfiguration.  Let  whoever  finds  him¬ 
self  unable  to  fit  into  the  framework  of  a  modern 
conception  of  the  worlds  of  Nature  and  of  Grace 
such  an  episode  as  the  return  of  the  two  Great  Ones 
of  the  past  to  a  part  even  for  a  moment  on  the  stage 
of  mortal  history,  yet  who  finds  himself  no  less  dis¬ 
satisfied  to  pronounce  the  story  an  allegoric  myth 
of  the  Law’s  supersession  by  the  Gospel ;  let 
him  recognise  in  the  tale  an  event  more  sub¬ 
stantial,  more  a  fact  in  history,  more  charged  with 
reality  for  men  than  would  be  the  presence  again 
on  earth’s  stage  of  Moses  and  Elias,  though  it  were 


106 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


truly  they  and  they  truly  should  talk  with  Jesus. 
For  my  own  self  I  do  think  it  was  they  and  that  the 
talk  did  pass :  hut  let  that  he  for  now,  since  the 
ground  of  that  belief  is  another  story  and  not  for 
the  telling  yet.  Give  me  no  more  of  fact  than  a 
happening  in  the  soul  of  Jesus.  Grant  me  that 
this  midnight  on  Hermon  held  a  moment  in  which 
man’s  destiny  passed  through  an  ordeal,  a  moment 
in  which  the  Son  of  Man  gathered  up  into  His  own 
conscious  present  being  all  the  past  being  of  the 
world  as  it  had  hitherto  fulfilled  itself  in  law¬ 
giver  and  prophet,  and  then  carried  humanity 
forward  in  Himself  towards  the  all-consummating 
fulfilment  of  the  Christ’s  self-devotion,  the  decease 
He  should  accomplish  at  Jerusalem;  grant  me 
that  the  mountain  side  was  the  scene  of  the  first 
act  in  the  Agony,  as  the  oliveyard  and  the  hillock 
of  the  Cross  were  the  second  and  the  last;  that 
here  on  Hermon  as  there  in  Gethsemane  and 
Golgotha,  the  salvation  of  human-kind  underwent 
decision  in  the  will  of  the  Saviour,  as  He  should 
choose  or  should  decline  the  Sacrifice  that  saves; 
— grant  me  this  event  in  the  soul  of  Christ,  and 
I  know  what  the  event  was  which  befell  Peter  and 
James  and  John.  It  was  no  illusion  flitting  across 
half-awakened  eyes.  Vision  it  was,  but  vision,  for 
them  as  for  Jesus,  which  was  action  too!  Before 
the  Master’s  mind  there  passed  the  world’s  drama 
of  redemption;  the  sacrifices  of  the  Law,  the  devo¬ 
tions  of  Prophecy  were  doing  obeisance  to  the 


IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  107 


offering  of  the  Lamb,  the  immolation  of  the  Lord’s 
Christ;  of  that  drama  He  was  alike  spectator  and 
actor,  in  His  mind  at  once  and  in  His  will  was  it 
enacted.  And  the  Three,  they  too  were  spectators 
and  also  actors.  The  Passion  with  which  the  Master 
was  travailing  was  projected  from  His  being  on 
the  being  of  them ;  it  was  a  reflection  as  of  a  pageant 
on  their  mind,  a  stress  as  of  an  ordeal  on  their  will ; 
they  saw  His  glory  and  were  glad,  the  shadow  of 
His  doom  and  shuddered;  it  was  good  for  them 

to  be  there  and  “let  us  build - ” ;  nay,  they  feared 

as  they  entered  into  the  cloud;  the  disciple  here 
was  as  his  Master,  he  watched  the  Agony  though 
with  how  scantly  awaked  intelligence,  he  endured 
it  though  with  a  sympathy  how  infirm. 

Call  the  Transfiguration,  if  you  will,  a  phantasm, 
a  picture  painted  on  a  cloud.  Be  it  so  for  you,  if 
it  can  be  for  you  no  more;  and  yet  believe  thus 
much  at  least  with  me,  that  this  picture  is  the 
portraiture  of  our  very  cause,  who  are  being  saved 
by  the  sacrifice  of  the  Lamb,  if  only  that  mind  shall 
be  in  us  which  was  in  Christ  Jesus,  if  the  divine- 
human  drama  of  a  Passion  enacted  in  His  soul  shall 
cast  its  glory  and  its  shadow  upon  ours  in  a  believ¬ 
ers’  vision,  in  a  disciple’s  love. 

Must  I  go  on,  for  completeness’  sake,  to  note  more 
humble  and  wayside  examples  of  the  reflections 
thrown  from  the  mind  of  the  prophet  of  Nazareth 
upon  those  of  simpler  disciples  ?  Humble  ex¬ 
amples  are  necessarily  little  available,  because 


108 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


they  were  indistinct  and  unimportant  and  therefore 
escaped  record.  There  occur  to  one  that  confes¬ 
sion  made  by  the  multitude,  that  Jesus  “taught 
with  authority  and  not  as  the  scribes,”  which  I 
take  to  mean  more  than  that  the  latter  taught 
“out  of  a  book”  and  Jesus  out  of  His  heart: 
it  describes  rather  that  effect  of  a  personality 
which  we  call  “magnetic.”  The  officers  who  would 
not  arrest  Him  because  “never  man  spake  like  this 
man,”  were  bearing  the  same  testimony.  The 
apostles  who  followed  Him  and  were  afraid  when 
He  steadfastly  set  His  face  to  go  to  Jerusalem  were 
receiving  an  impression  of  something  more  pene¬ 
trating  than  the  verbal  warnings  which  the  Master 
had  spoken  out.  These  are  scanty  indications,  but 
in  the  nature  of  the  case  it  could  hardly  be  other¬ 
wise,  for  scanty  too  would  be  the  opportunity  of 
a  disciple  to  confess  in  words  his  reception  of  an 
impulse  from  the  Master  received  on  his  secret 
soul.  But  this  thin  illustration  by  specific  instances 
is  much  fortified  by  the  large  and  general  observa¬ 
tion  of  the  kind  of  persons  on  whom  the  person 
of  Jesus  most  worked  effect.  To  the  poor  the  gos¬ 
pel  was  preached,  and  theirs  first  was  the  King¬ 
dom  of  Heaven.  The  poor  who  were  the  simple  in 
culture,  the  fishermen  and  yeomen,  not  the  doc¬ 
tor  and  scribe  ;  the  poor  in  social  status,  the  pub¬ 
lican  and  sinner,  not  the  Pharisee  and  Sadducee; 
these  poor  were  the  glad  hearers  of  the  word.  Might 
one  put  it  in  a  phrase  and  say  that  Christ  was  sent 


IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  109 


not  to  the  wise  and  prudent,  who  walk  by  reason, 
but  to  babes  whose  light  is  instinct  ?  This  is  what 
one  should  expect  if  the  force  exerted  by  the 
Teacher  made  appeal  rather  to  the  psychic  and  in¬ 
tuitional  side  of  human  nature,  than  to  the  intelli- 
gential.  It  would  not  be  the  “Intellectuals”  who 
would  most  readily  respond,  but  those  whom  we 
might  name  the  “Instinctives.”  It  was  bound  to  be 
so  if  telepathy  worked  then  as  it  works  now. 

But  these  inconclusive  evidences  of  a  thought¬ 
writing  are  bringing  us  to  the  second  branch  of 
our  matter.  The  impact  on  a  follower’s  conscious¬ 
ness  of  the  unspoken  thought  of  the  Master  which 
could  not  easily  be  disclosed  by  word  of  mouth  might 
receive  expression  by  act  of  will.  But  such  a  com¬ 
munication  to  him  from  Jesus  would  be  a  trans¬ 
ference  not  of  a  thought  but  an  action,  and  thus 
we  are  led  straight  to  the  other  of  our  two  cate¬ 
gories;  from  the  knowing  of  Jesus  we  turn  to  the 
doing. 

II.  The  Tkansfekence  of  Will 

This  power  in  Jesus  to  project  the  action  of  His 
will  upon  those  in  contact  with  Him  is  luminously 
illustrated  in  the  whole  story  of  the  Healing  of 
bodies  and  the  Conversion  of  souls.  No  one,  I 
suppose,  needs  to  be  satisfied  that  the  cures  worked 
by  Jesus  were  operations  of  His  will  upon  the  will 
of  the  patient,  for  that  is  the  account  we  should 
most  of  us  give  of  the  strictly  analogous  though 


110 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


not  equal  achievements  of  the  modern  spiritual 
healer.  It  would  be  tedious  to  go  into  this  further 
than  to  call  up  a  selected  example  or  two.  These 
had  better  come  from  cases  where  the  telepathy — 
action  across  an  interval — is  marked  in  character. 
The  cure  of  the  centurion’s  servant  and  of  the 
Syrophsenician’s  daughter  are  the  most  obvious, 
and  in  these  the  interest  has  this  complexity,  that 
the  will  of  Jesus  transfers  itself  not  to  the  patient’s 
will  immediately,  but  through  a  third  person’s 
will.  It  was  the  centurion’s  faith,  greater  than  any 
found  in  Israel,  that  saved  the  servant;  it  is  the 
heathen  mother,  whose  faith  is  great  enough  to 
win  the  bread  of  life  for  her  unconscious  child. 
There  is  intense  suggestiveness  in  this  mediation, 
but  one  must  not  complicate  the  problem  by  going 
aside  to  pursue  it  here.  For  our  purpose  it  is 
enough  that,  whether  to  principal  or  to  second,  an 
energy  of  will  did  really  pass  from  the  faith  in 
the  soul  of  Jesus  to  wake  a  faith  in  the  soul  of 
another,  and  by  that  intercourse  the  cure  was  done. 
But  it  appears  that  the  unconsciousness  could  some¬ 
times  be  in  the  mind  not  of  the  patient  but  of  the 
agent.  When  the  sick  woman  in  the  crowd  touches 
the  tassel  on  the  rabbi’s  robe  and  is  healed  by  the 
act,  the  faith  which  makes  whole  is  initiated  by 
the  patient,  at  least  so  far  as  is  indicated  in  the 
story.  Jesus  at  once  perceives  that  virtue  has 
gone  out  of  Him,  but  the  action  did  not  begin  with 
Him.  Here  again  reflections  are  started  in  us 


IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  111 


which  we  must  not  follow  out  at  this  point.  What 
was  to  be  demonstrated  was  a  power  in  Jesus  to 
evoke  by  His  own  act  of  faith  an  active  faith  in 
another,  and  this  I  think  has  been  done  very  readily ; 
will-transference  seems  the  certain  account  of  the 
miracles  of  healing.  Well,  here  we  have  been  forc¬ 
ing  an  open  door  by  my  argument  ;  but  what  can 
my  theory  say  to  the  Haisings  from  death?  The 
child  of  Jairus,  the  widow’s  son,  what  will  to  live 
could  be  in  them,  when  life  itself  was  there  no  more  ? 
Do  I  know,  does  any  one  know  at  what  point  life 
ends  when  even  the  physician  declares  the  man 
dead?  Certainly  it  does  not  always  end  when  con¬ 
sciousness  is  gone,  nor  sometimes  when  other  func¬ 
tionings  of  the  organic  life  have  ceased,  for  even 
physicians  have  erred  in  declaring  death.  Where  is 
the  line,  where  the  bourne  from  which  the  traveller 
cannot  return  ?  Point  it  out  to  us,  and  I  may  admit 
that  the  faith  by  which  the  traveller  recrossed  the 
bourne  was  not  “the  will  of  the  flesh,”  and  there  is 
more  than  nature  in  his  return.  You  will  challenge 
me  to  explain  the  tale  of  Lazarus  so.  But  the  tale 
of  Lazarus  is  a  too  much  disputed  history  to  be  a 
test  case  for  any  theory;  and  also  my  present  pur¬ 
pose  does  not  require  a  decision  of  that  point.  I 
am  producing  evidence  that  Jesus  conveyed  physical 
vitality  by  the  shock  of  His  will  evoking  the  will 
to  live  in  another.  That  evidence  has  been  ade¬ 
quately  adduced,  if  we  had  only  proved  the  power  of 
Christ  to  enhance  an  existent  or  to  fortify  a  strug- 


m 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


gling  vitality  in  a  sufferer  having  the  faith  to  be  made 
whole.  So  mnch  surely  has  been  made  good. 

Where  I  should  like  to  go  further  in  this  gen¬ 
eral  direction,  if  only  I  shall  not  weaken  my  whole 
case  by  adducing  disputed  matters  of  fact,  is  the 
problem  of  the  “Mature  Miracles,”  that  stumbling- 
block  for  some  who  are  among  our  most  faithful, 
and  to  whom  the  Healings  present  no  difficulty 
at  all.  The  Draught  of  Fishes,  the  Quelling  of 
the  Storm,  the  Walking  on  the  Sea,  the  Feeding 
of  the  Five  Thousand,  the  Wine  of  Cana,  the  Wither¬ 
ing  of  the  Fig-tree,  are  occurrences  which  are  not, 
it  is  thought,  made  credible  by  any  known  or 
imaginable  laws  of  human  existence,  and  are  there¬ 
fore  not  to  he  accepted  by  conscientious  thinkers  un¬ 
til  the  external  evidence  for  them  is  strong  enough 
to  enforce  that  credence.  So  long  as  it  is  more 
likely  that  eyewitnesses  or  historians  made  a  mis¬ 
take,  than  that  a  vast  human  experience  was  contra¬ 
dicted  by  unprecedented  facts  in  nature,  our  friends 
say  they  can  treat  the  stories  only  as  symbols  of 
spiritual  truth,  not  as  history.  Well,  if  and  when 
the  evidence  is  proved  worthless,  the  incidents  must 
become  symbols;  symbols  of  a  history  still  that  of 
man’s  spirit,  not  his  flesh.  That  position  has  not 
yet  been  reached;  and  meanwhile  I  seem  at  times 
to  feel  the  shadow  falling  on  us  of  a  new  revela¬ 
tion  of  Fact,  which  will  revaluate  and  transvaluate 
our  hitherto  conceptions  alike  of  nature  and  of 
super-nature.  Am  I  ready  to  give  any  shape  to 


■IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  113 


that  coming  Fact,  or  even  any  substance  to  its 
shadow?  And  if  I  am  not,  would  it  not  be  best 
to  bold  my  tongue,  even  from  my  own  bearing? 
But  no,  I  cannot  quite  refrain,  while  no  one  over¬ 
bears  me  but  myself.  Think,  John  Desmond,  of 
the  least  of  the  difficulties  you  have  named,  the 
Miraculous  Draught.  If  we  claim  it  for  a  miracle 
and  not  a  chance  coincidence,  what  is  it  we  have 
to  accept  ?  This  only,  that  the  presence  of  a 
shoal  in  the  water  on  the  ship’s  right  side  was  able 
to  impress  itself  on  the  psychic  consciousness  of 
J esus.  Why  should  it  not  ?  All  things  in  the 
world  (as  the  philosophers  sometimes  remind  us) 
do  impress  themselves  on  all  things  ;  every  magni¬ 
tude  affects  every  other  at  least  by  physical  attrac¬ 
tion.  When  the  magnitude  is  not  star  nor  stone 
but  the  thing  which  has  “power  to  say  I  am  I,” 
when  the  forces  Gravitation  and  Electricity  have 
been  elaborated  into  Conscience  and  Volition,  then 
one  speculates  that  the  being  of  the  conscious 
creature  may  be,  not  attractive  of,  but  aware  of 
other  facts  and  objects  in  its  world.  Potentially 
it  will  be  aware  of  all  facts  and  objects  whatsoever 
and  wherever.  Actually  it  will  be  aware  of  them 
only  with  an  awareness  varying  in  degree  as  the 
presence  of  the  object  varies,  that  is  to  say,  accord¬ 
ing  to  the  more  or  less  nearness  and  intensity  of 
the  relation  in  which  it  stands  to  the  object  per¬ 
ceived.  But  in  explaining  this  particular  incident 
of  the  fishermen  one  need  not  be  purely  abstract. 


114 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


A  concrete  example  suggests  itself  to  any  one  who 
has  watched  the  water-finder  and  been  led  to  sur¬ 
mise  a  physical  sensitiveness  in  the  “dowser’s” 
organism  to  the  presence  of  water  under  earth.  If 
that  surmise  is  right,  my  hypothesis  of  this  sen¬ 
tience  in  Jesus  of  an  object  beyond  the  range  of 
known  sense-perception  is  a  vera  causa .  But  this 
opens  to  me  a  deep-going  vista  into  the  region  of 
human  potency  upon  nature.  It  does  not  yet  make 
the  multiplication  of  loaves  or  the  walking  on  water 
events  credible  on  their  own  merits,  but  it  does  much 
to  disarm  a  hostile  criticism  so  far  as  the  critic 
bases  on  the  a  'priori  impossibility  of  the  facts. 
“Miracles  do  not  happen.”  Do  they  not?  Let  us 
grant  it  you,  and  then  ask,  How  do  you  know  these 
things  are  miraculous  ? 

“Irresponsible  fancies,”  are  they,  these  of  mine? 
Well,  they  are  fancies  certainly.  In  religion  you 
cannot  travel  far  with  matter-of-fact  for  your  only 
guide.  That  pedestrian  soon  reaches  the  brink  of 
the  sensible  order,  and  one  can  go  forward  only 
on  the  wing.  Fancies  then;  but  not  so  irrespon¬ 
sible.  They  may  not  be  called  to  account  by  any 
church  authority,  but  they  are  answerable  most 
severely  to  my  own  soul,  for  she  trusts  all  the  weight 
of  her  insignificant  private  fortune  in  time  and 
thereafter  to  this  fancy,  the  scout  she  sends  out 
through  the  fog  of  sensuous  blindness  to  bring  in¬ 
telligence  of  the  world  beyond  it — a  world  where 
she  must  presently  try  to  live.  What  in  earth  or 


IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  115 


in  heaven  matters  to  me  so  much  as  to  know  the 
facts  of  both  these  very  unequal  hemispheres  of 
the  full  world;  and  what  can  I  hope  to  learn  of  the 
greater  one  except  its  extreme  borderland  where 
the  seeming-solid  flesh  melts  into  spirit  across  a 
line  which  is  only  ideal?  But  of  this  borderland  I 
do  have  hope  to  learn  something  by  a  method 
which  has  found  itself  to  my  hand.  It  is  this 
faculty  of  my  total  being  to  learn  of  the  world 
beyond  our  senses  by  the  touch  on  it  of  the  sense 
of  life  in  me ,  by  that  organ  of  knowledge  which  is 
not  an  organ  of  my  being  but  the  organism  itself 
of  my  being — spirit,  soul,  and  body  together. 
With  this  organ  of  sentience  I  make  experiment 
of  the  insensible  reality,  the  experiment  of  dis¬ 
covering  whether  when  I  touch  that  reality  I  live 
by  the  touch.  If  life  comes  to  me  from  that  which 
I  try  to  touch  in  the  blind  void  of  the  super-sensuous, 
then  it  is  reality  that  I  have  touched.  You  may 
call  my  experiment  fancy,  but  others  will  call  it 
faith.  My  own  is  a  better  name  for  it  than  either; 
I  go  on  calling  it  Life. 

What  more?  Why,  something  which  is  every¬ 
thing  in  my  contention.  It  is  not  Christ’s  power 
of  making  whole  the  bodies  of  men  by  will-trans¬ 
ference  or  of  their  minds  by  thought-transference 
that  I  am  to  make  good.  I  was  to  show  that  He 
made  atonement  for  their  souls  by  such  a  ministry. 
I  was  to  prove  that  the  faith  which  made  whole 
their  mortal  and  eternal  being  was  a  mind  and  will 


116 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


stirred  into  an  energy  of  life  nnto  God,  by  that 
energy  of  life  in  the  mind  and  will  of  Jesus,  the 
prophet  of  Nazareth,  not  as  yet  declared  to  he  the 
Son  of  God  by  the  rising  from  the  dead.  It  was 
right  and  methodic  of  me  perhaps  to  set  in  order 
as  carefully  as  I  could  these  indications  of  His 
faith-transferring  power  which  worked  effect  upon 
the  mundane  thinkings  and  doings  of  men,  but 
that  study  looks  almost  too  plodding  an  industry 
as  soon  as  I  face  the  essential  problem  of  the  Atone¬ 
ment  for  the  soul,  and  seek  to  find  the  evidence 
that  this  too  was  the  work  done  by  a  telepathy  of 
spirit. 

The  Telepathy  of  the  Passion 

“The  Church  of  God,  which  He  hath  purchased 
with  His  own  blood!”  That  has  been  our  idea  of 
Atonement :  it  was  wrought  by  the  shedding  of 
blood,  the  blood  of  Jesus,  by  the  sacrifice  of  the 
death  of  Christ.  We  were  right  and  also  not  right. 
The  shedding  of  the  blood  did  atone;  not  however 
because  the  blood  was  shed,  but  because  “the  blood 
is  the  life.”  The  sacrifice  of  the  death  does  save; 
not  however  the  sacrifice  which  was  a  dying  on 
the  Cross,  but  the  self-offering  which  was  a  living 
unto  God.  That  life  was  outpoured,  that  sacrifice 
was  bound  on  the  altar,  before  the  Roman  soldier 
set  up  the  cross  and  Pilate  wrote  on  its  head,  “  J esus, 
King  of  the  Jews.”  This  sacrifice,  the  obedience 
of  the  Son,  which  was  the  daily  life  unto  God  which 


IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  117 


J esus  lived  in  His  disciples’  sight,  this  was  the  sacri¬ 
fice  which  atoned  for  Peter  and  his  brethren,  and 
the  women  who  followed  from  Galilee.  It  atoned 
because  like  all  other  thought  and  act  it  had  power 
to  repeat  itself  in  the  consciousness  of  men  and 
women  near  enough  in  range,  apt  enough  in  intel¬ 
ligence,  to  receive  the  stroke  of  a  virtue  which 
went  out  from  it,  and  to  respond  by  a  movement 
of  their  own.  With  an  impoverished  apprehension 
we  commonly  have  explained  the  conversion  of 
Christ’s  contemporaries  and  our  later  selves  by  the 
wisdom  of  the  Preacher  on  the  Mount,  the  power 
of  the  Healer,  the  holy  conduct  of  the  Just  One. 
Sermon,  miracle,  example,  are  parts  and  parcels 
of  the  facts,  pieces  of  the  whole  which  we  can 
find  names  for;  hut  the  true  fact  and  the  whole 
fact  is  the  more  mystic  operation  incarnated 
in  these  mortal  words  and  deeds,  hut  also  in  a  flesh 
less  palpable, — the  sacrifice  of  the  being  of  Jesus, 
which  momently  He  offered  to  the  Father  by  every 
thought  of  His  which  mirrored  the  eternal  mind, 
and  every  act  of  His  in  which  the  Father’s  will  not 
His  was  done.  This  sacrifice  went  out  in  virtue 
and  repeated  itself  in  the  souls  of  those  who  en¬ 
circled  Jesus  and  were  sensitive  to  His  touch.  By 
this  telepathy  of  spirit  the  ministry  of  the  Nazarene, 
not  yet  revealed  as  more  than  Son  of  Man,  wrought 
the  atonement  of  those  who  companied  with  Him  in 
the  flesh.  Because  He  lived  unto  God  they  Quia  vivo, 
lived  also. 


118 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Can  one  be  required  to  describe  in  terms  of  tbe 
concrete  an  operation  of  which  the  senses,  our 
informants  of  other  fact,  cannot  take  cognisance? 
]STo  more  should  be  asked  than  to  indicate  the  points 
in  the  earthly  story  where  the  secret  line  of  spiritual 
action  catches  the  light  for  a  moment  by  embodi¬ 
ment  in  some  historic  incident.  Those  few  moments 
are  enough  to  substantiate  the  interpretation  of 
the  Christ-act  which  I  am  submitting.  There 
are  the  prophecies  which  went  before ;  Simeon’s 
presentiment  over  the  babe  in  his  arms  of  a  sword 
that  should  come  with  him  to  pierce  a  mother’s 
bosom;  the  Forerunner’s  signalling  of  the  Messiah’s 
entry  by  the  title  not  of  Champion  of  Israel  but  of 
Lamb  of  God.  Then  the  kingdom  is  proclaimed 
from  the  Mount,  but  is  a  kingdom  where  might  is 
not  right,  nor  is  even  might,  but  the  weak  shall 
inherit  earth.  The  soldier  oath  to  the  Christ  of 
God  is  drawn  from  the  follower,  only  that  he  may 
learn,  soon  as  it  has  passed  his  ardent  lips,  that  it 
has  been  sworn  not  to  a  conqueror  but  a  martyr 
king,  and  that  to  deprecate  the  martyrdom  is  to 
desert  to  the  enemy,  Satan  the  tempter.  His 
closest  comrades  ask  for  posts  of  honour,  are  warned 
that  honour  is  peril;  they  are  schooled  enough  to 
dare  the  cup,  though  not  yet  to  drink  it.  Veil  by 
veil  the  pageant  of  sacrifice  discloses  its  features 
of  pain  and  shame.  Strength  by  strength  the  mag¬ 
net  of  the  unique  personality  draws  the  true  fol¬ 
lower  or  repels  the  false.  The  tragic  crisis  finds 


IN  THE  DAYS  OF  HIS  FLESH  119 


the  disciple  incapable  as  yet  of  a  fellowship  in  suf¬ 
ferings  which  are  not  seen  for  an  entry  into  glory. 
Death’s  curtain  falls  upon  the  spectacle  and  hearts 
of  watchers  dead  as  death  within  them.  It  is  lifted 
on  the  divine  issue:  behold  the  Lamb  of  God  that 
was  slain  and  is  alive  again:  the  sacrifice  has  been 
answered  by  the  fire ;  to  lose  self  unto  God  is  to  win 
the  self;  Jesus  died  and  Jesus  lives;  because  He 
lives  we  shall  live  also. 

So  I  read  the  tale.  It  is  told  in  many  words, 
line  upon  growing  line,  precept  upon  precept,  but 
one  line  sums  it  all.  Jesus  by  self-sacrifice  lived 
the  life  unto  God  in  sight  and  touch  of  His  human 
brothers;  the  pulses  of  that  life  in  Him  beat  upon 
their  soul;  that  soul  awoke  at  the  touch  and  lived 
unto  Christ  and  God. 

The  evidences  for  the  law  of  faith-propagation 
which  I  have  outlined  here  are  drawn  from  the 
experience  of  men  who  were  Christ’s  mortal  con¬ 
temporaries.  Surely  we  men  of  to-day  can  find 
in  experiences  of  our  own  an  evidence  to  confirm 
or  else  confute  that  testimony.  We  should  know 
each  in  himself  what  it  is  that  makes  us  Christian, 
whether  it  is  the  tradition  written  in  Bible  and 
embodied  in  Church  institution,  or  is  also  and  more 
effectually  the  Person  of  the  Sacrificed,  casting 
from  His  sacrifice  a  vibration  on  our  person  which 
it  receives  and  echoes.  Yes,  evidence  is  there 
indeed,  and  evidence  that  most  constraineth  us. 


120  THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 

But  this  will  be  the  story  not  of  the  Galilean  preacher 
but  of  Jesus  human  and  glorified.  We  are  drawn 
to  the  brink  of  that  mystery,  but  at  the  line  this 
seeker  will  pause  and  rest.  He  feels  as  the  adven¬ 
turer  of  a  great  rhymer’s  tale  when  before  the 
threshold  of  the  enterprise  he  turns  to  sleep,  and 
dreams  of  himself  as  a  discoverer,  who  in  the  twilight 
anchors  his  barque  by  the  coast  of  promise,  and 
there  rocks  out  the  night  lapped  in  a  brimming  blest 
expectancy, 


On  that  dark  shore  just  seen  that  it  is  rich. 


CHAPTER  XI 


THE  ATONEMENT  IN  THE  THREE  DATS 
“A  little  while  and  ye  shall  not  see  Me.” 

“All  men  are  mortal.’7  That  is  from  the  Death' 
manuals  of  Deductive  Logic,  an  example  of  a  major 
premiss  in  a  syllogism.  “William  Smith  is  a  man77 ; 
there  is  a  minor  premiss;  and  the  conclusion  is 
logically  certain,  “William  Smith  will  die.77 

The  major  premiss  is  impregnably  true,  the  con¬ 
clusion  is  beyond  rebutment,  but  it  has  taken  the 
war  to  make  us  draw  it.  Till  then  it  was  common 
knowledge  that  all  men  die,  but  not  a  private  con¬ 
viction  that  any  one  in  particular,  if  it  was  oneself, 
would  die.  Distinguished  men  were  reported  to  us 
in  the  newspaper  to  be  dying,  or  we  read  there  of  a 
young  officer  killed  in  India  by  fever  or  a  hills- 
man’s  bullet,  or  a  letter  told  us  of  a  friend’s  son 
drowned  in  a  Thames  lasher.  It  was  a  thing  that 
happens,  not  a  thing  that  happens  to  us.  Death  is 
no  personal  concern  of  ours;  how  then  the  things 
which  are  behind  death,  the  Resurrection  and  the 
Judgment  ? 


121 


122 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


But  now  .  .  .  What  is  this  chant  that  comes  ring¬ 
ing  down  the  street  ? 

Vive  la — vive  la — vive  la — 

Vive  la  compagnie. 

It  is  a  company  of  the  Dunminster  levy  swinging 
past  my  door.  I  stand  on  the  step,  and  from  the 
athlete  striding  at  the  head  of  his  men  with  the 
tread  of  a  stag,  I  catch  a  salute,  which  elates  me. 
It  is  a  scholar  of  mine  in  college  days.  “Vive  la — 
Long  live  the  company !”  do  they  sing?  Who 
knows  if  they  will  live,  this  company  of  a  hundred 
lithe  English  lads.  Hext  week  they  will  be  at  a 
finishing  school  on  a  Surrey  heath  or  Wiltshire  down. 
ISText  month  (or  so  they  fondly  anticipate)  they 
will  be  in  Flanders.  The  next  month — where  ? 
Something  of  them,  not  they,  will  be  lying  two 
thousand  yards  away  from  a  hill-side,  innocently 
festooned  here  and  there  with  patches  of  shrub 
and  stacks  of  firewood,  out  of  which  Death,  that 
lay  in  wait  there,  has  opened  her  mouth  upon  them 
and  swallowed  them  up  quick  into  Hades  the 
Unseen. 

Ah,  then  men  do  really  die,  for  these  men  die; 
every  day  their  likes  are  dying  out  there;  death 
is  what  happens  to  a  man.  And  if  death,  then  that 
which  is  “after  death/’  which  we  say  is  a  judg¬ 
ment,  a  fortune  good  or  ill  according  to  the  sentence 
dealt  to  this  one  or  to  that.  It  happens  to  these 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  THREE  DAYS  123 


lightsome  youths,  this  After-Death.  Then  it  hap¬ 
pens  to  me.  My  heart  aches,  oh  how  it  aches  some¬ 
times!  for  the  lads  in  that  tramping  column;  the 
next  moment  the  pang  is  on  its  own  account.  I  shall 
die;  I  shall  go  find  a  fortune  in  that  Afterwards. 
What  do  I  believe  that  fortune  will  be  ?  And  why 
do  I  believe  it  ? 

I  thank  God  through  Jesus  Christ  our  Lord. 

At  Weimar  in  the  Goethe  house,  to  which  Hades 

“the 

before  it  was  nationalised  my  uncle  Richard  unseen.” 
was  privately  admitted,  the  last  of  the  Goethes,  the 
then  owner,  showed  him  among  the  relics  a  pencil- 
sketch  left  by  the  poet.  A  Greek  hero  in  Hades  hails 
a  newcomer  to  the  Shades,  a  greater  than  himself 
(but  I  am  not  clear  as  to  the  name  of  either),  with 
the  greeting  inscribed  below,  “Bist  du  auch  herunter 
gekommen?”  “Art  thou  also”  (one  might  para¬ 
phrase)  “thou,  our  great  one,  become  weak  as  we; 
art  thou  become  like  unto  us?”  It  haunted  my 
uncle,  it  has  haunted  me  from  him.  No  wonder: 
it  is  mortality’s  heart-cry  out  of  a  deep  heart,  the 
soul  of  one  of  earth’s  strong  spirits,  long  since  become 
“weak  as  they.” 

“Weak  as  we,  like  unto  us.”  But  they  .  .  .  what 
are  they  like,  and  are  they  indeed  weak,  they  who 
are  there  ?  Isaiah  thought  so,  and  so  perhaps 
thought  Goethe,  or  believed  themselves  to  think,  as 
I  would  rather  interpret  the  mind  whether  of 


124 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


prophet  or  of  poet.  But  “Art  thou  also  come  down 
hither?”  has  for  my  ear  sung  itself  like  a  changing 
chime  upon  a  hell  into  “He  descended  into  Hades.” 
Thou  also,  Thou  our  greatest,  art  gone  down  thither : 
Thou  didst  descend  into  Hell  the  Hidden,  into  Hades 
the  Unseen !  Thou  didst  become  like  unto  them  who 
were  there  before  Thee,  wert  weak  as  they, — if  theirs 
indeed  was  weakness. 

But  what  Jesus  was  like  when  from  the  Seen  He 
passed  into  the  Unseen,  this  we  know.  He  was 
like  the  man  who  walked  in  Galilee  and  died  in 
Jewry.  Hay,  He  was  that  Man,  the  very  same; 
handle  Him  and  see  that  it  is  He  Himself,  none 
other  than  Jesus  the  Son  of  Mary,  nothing  less 
than  He,  whatever  more,  unimaginably  more,  than 
Jesus,  be  also  here  with  Him. 

Jesus  went  into  Hades  the  Unseen.  We  say  it 
in  our  Creed,  and  of  late  have  been  thinking  that 
we  ought  to  unsay  it;  and  since  we  are  afraid  to 
unsay  a  word  which  has  once  been  said  in  a  venerated 
formula,  we  have  disarmed  it  of  meaning;  have  told 
our  flock  that  no  more  is  affirmed  than  the  word 
Hades  (the  “not  seen”)  connotes;  that  Jesus  went 
out  of  sight ;  left  the  body  which  made  Him  visible, 
underwent  a  real  dissolution  of  flesh  and  spirit.  The 
mediseval  fancy  of  a  “Harrowing  of  Hell,”  must  be 
put  away  as  a  childish  thing.  The  Hew  Testament’s 
“Preaching  to  the  spirits  in  prison”  was  a  pious  but 
unauthorised  opinion. 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  THREE  DAYS  125 


This  emasculation  of  a  primitive  dogma  “Where 
has  been  theology’s  second  thought.  yye  wast  thou, 

need  rest  in  it  no  longer.  That  guess  of  the  those  three 
early  Christian  that  Jesus  went  and  preached days? 
to  the  spirits  in  prison,  was  a  guess  but  a  well- 
inspired.  To  me  it  seems  of  late  an  inevitable  truth. 
It  could  not  be  otherwise.  We  know  that  Jesus 
was  no  longer  in  that  mangled  body  laid  in  Joseph’s 
vault  (though  not  all  of  us  remember  that  we  know 
this  when  we  theologise  about  the  Rising)  ;  then 
where  was  He?  In  the  “other  world,”  the  timeless 
spaceless  world,  where  eyes  could  not  follow  Him; 
and  so  we  have  called  it  Hades.  What  was  He 
doing  there?  He  was  doing  as  He  had  ever  done; 
He  was  being  the  Life,  making  souls  to  live.  The 
souls  of  whom?  Those  who  were  in  that  “other 
world,”  all  who  had  once  been,  and  were  no  longer, 
in  the  flesh.  They  were  there  already,  and  now 
He  too  was  there;  He  was  now  with  “all  the  com¬ 
pany”  .  .  .  not  yet  “of  Heaven,”  but  of  Paradise, 
and  of  that  dim  region  which  is  no  garden  of  souls 
but  a  wilderness,  perchance  a  waste,  of  the  spirits 
that  departed  hence  but  not  “in  the  Lord.”  Yes, 
in  the  company  of  these  men.  Oh  the  sudden  back¬ 
ward  vista  that  opens  as  if  by  a  shaft  of  illumina¬ 
tion  to  my  understanding!  For  at  last  I  see  it, 
the  thing  I  could  never  see  till  now:  how  the  his¬ 
toric  Incarnation  could  profit  the  souls  of  the  men 
for  whom  that  history  was  not  history,  for  whom 
Jesus  had  not  yet  died.  Often  have  I  tried  to  see 


1 26 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


by  some  optic  glass  of  metaphysic,  straining  my 
visual  faculty  to  peer  through  the  illusion  of  time, 
cheating  myself  with  the  conceit  that  I  was  imaging 
a  power  in  the  historic  event  of  the  Incarnation  to 
project  its  force  back  through  the  past  as  well  as 
forward  through  the  future.  Phantasmal  logic/ 
vain  racking  of  the  mental  nerve!  And  needless 
wholly.  Albs  clear  as  air  and  plain  as  earth.  What 
hinders  those  men  of  the  past,  whose  human  fate 
had  a  first  brief  mortal  chapter  written  without  the 
Christ-tale  to  illumine  it, — what  hinders  them  to  re¬ 
ceive  life  from  Christ  as  surely  as  we  whose  temporal 
record  is  now  writing  itself  under  the  light  of  the 
Jesus  in  record  of  the  Son  of  Man?  They  are  there 
Hades.  now,  there  where  He  is;  their  human  fates 
no  longer  miss  Him.  He  is  fulfilling  in  Paradise, 
by  the  touch  of  the  Spirit  of  J esus  the  Human  upon 
spirits  human,  that  of  them  which  was  left  un¬ 
wrought,  remaking  that  which  was  made  amiss,  or 
that  which  the  Enemy  had  unmade.  Do  we  tell 
ourselves,  in  that  unknown  Christian’s  conjecture, 
which  the  sacred  record  carries  down  to  us,  that  for 
two  nights  and  a  day  Jesus  went  and  “preached  to 
the  spirits  in  prison”  ?  Why  call  we  them  “in 
prison”  ?  Is  Hades  a  prison,  unless  it  be  for  evil¬ 
doers,  reserved  in  chains  under  darkness  against  a 
judgment?  Jesus  called  the  Hades  to  which  He  was 
going,  not  a  prison  but  a  paradise,  and  the  malefac¬ 
tor  was  to  go  with  Him  there.  Then  the  spirits  of 
men  who  have  passed  into  Hades,  how  are  they  less 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  THREE  DAYS  12? 


free  of  that  wider  world  than  our  brothers  who  on 
sick-bed  or  on  battlefield  died  yesterday,  died  and 
went  the  same  whither  as  went  their  forefathers  and 
Father  Abraham,  and  as  Jesus  the  Crucified  Him¬ 
self, — into  the  Beyond,  the  land  whose  name,  still 
as  of  old,  is  Hades,  the  Unseen  Country  ?  And  why 
must  the  Saviour  be  preacher  to  them  of  the  evangel 
only  in  those  few  hours  between  His  dying  and  His 
rising?  Whatever  that  Christian  thought,  we  think 
that  Jesus  became  by  death  dweller  in  both  the 
Unseen  and  the  Seen.  If  we  have  said  of  Jesus 
Christ  that  He  is  the  same  yesterday,  to-day,  and 
forever,  let  us  dare  say  it  also  of  the  Jesus  whom 
once  men  knew  not  to  be  the  Christ.  Jesus  then 
who  went  yesterday  into  the  Unseen  is  there  to-day 
also  and  forever. 

Ah,  here  has  my  quest  discovered  something,  or 
rediscovered.  It  has  found  not  a  new  article  of 
the  Creed,  not  an  old  article  reinterpreted  as  a  sym¬ 
bol,  but  a  credal  fact  which  some  of  us  thought  was 
a  pious  figment,  and  the  rest  could  only  keep  in  its 
place  by  a  nerveless  interpretation.  After  all,  the 
despised  and  rejected  article  is  true,  a  simple  truth, 
a  pregnant  truth.  Our  Lord  J esus  Christ  was  cruci¬ 
fied,  dead,  and  buried;  yes,  but  also  verily  and 
indeed  He  descended  into  Hell  the  Hidden.  He 
went  into  Hades  the  Unseen. 

My  fellows  who  pronounce  the  article  with  me 
may  for  a  moment  fail  to  find  the  Hades  of  the 
Three  Days  in  my  conception  of  an  Unseen  World 


128 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


where  the  Christ  abides  for  ever.  Let  them  look 
at  it  a  few  moments  more,  and  they  will  be  able  to 
find  their  own  conception  there,  though  only  as  one 
finds  a  part  in  a  whole. 

He  went  into  the  Unseen.  With  whom 

Whom  did 

Jesus  meet  did  He  meet  there,  to  whom  did  He  give 
m  Hades .  py  His  converse  there  ?  The  men  of 

the  past,  so  we  all  have  told  ourselves.  There,  writes 
one  churchman  poet,  He  is  “at  large  among  the 
dead,”  He  “wakes  Abraham  to  rejoice,”  His  eye 
calms  “the  thronging  band  of  souls,”  at  His  side  the 
companion  of  His  crucifixion  “waits  on  His  tri¬ 
umph.”  It  is  a  very  great  company,  a  multitude 
whom  no  man  can  number.  But  are  these  the  whole 
company  whom  Jesus  meets  in  the  Unseen  World, 
are  these  all  whom  there  by  His  being’s  touch  He 
redeems  from  spirit’s  death,  or  in  whom  He  fulfils 
the  life  which  a  mortal  accident  cut  down  as  a  flower 
or  an  ungospelled  ignorance  kept  shut  in  the  un¬ 
opened  hud  ?  The  fate  of  the  untaught  or  the  early 
perishing  of  our  day,  the  child  of  the  thieves’  quarter 
or  the  boy  slain  in  his  teens,  how  is  it  different  from 
that  of  the  “thronging  band,”  whom  our  poet  com¬ 
passionates?  If  it  was  here,  in  Hades,  that  Jesus 
brought  life  to  Abraham  and  the  fathers  of  Israel, 
or  to  Dymas  the  robber,  will  He  do  less  for  one  of 
those  soldier  lads  who  drops  by  a  German  bullet 
before  his  soul  has  had  time  to  decide  its  choice  for 
life  of  the  narrow  way  or  the  broad?  Tell  not  me 
ithat  this  has  not  been  told  us,  must  be  left  to  Heaven’s 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  THREE  DAYS  129 


uncovenanted  mercy.  No,  there  are  things  of  his 
mortal  destiny  which  a  man  knows  without  being 
told:  there  is  a  mercy  of  heaven  not  revealed  in 
the  Bible  but  in  the  heart.  By  that  revelation  I 
know  thus  much,  and  on  the  knowledge  I  would  ven¬ 
ture  all  I  hold  dear  of  here  and  hereafter:  in  the 
Unseen  World  Jesus  works  atonement  on  the  still 

i 

unatoned.  In  that  large  opportunity  of  time  and 
room,  He  can  touch  to  fair  issue  the  arrested  life 
and  the  spoilt;  souls  broken  in  this  world  He  can 
make  whole,  souls  which  it  left  still  to  be  made  He 
can  there  make  perfect. 

My  heart  tells  me  this.  Others  round  me  are 
being  told  it,  so  they  say,  in  these  days  of  Words 
war  and  death.  It  is  not  their  heart  that  from  the 

•  Unseen. 

tells  them,  as  they  think,  but  a  more  articu¬ 
late  voice;  words  from  some  one  dear  to  them  who 
was  yesterday  here,  and  to-day  is  not  here  but  yon¬ 
der.  He  speaks  to  them,  they  say;  speaks  words 
which  dictate  themselves,  write  themselves  down  as 
from  the  unseen,  unsounding  lips;  write  themselves 
on  the  paper  of  the  mortal  scribe,  with  the  scribe’s 
pencil,  but  not  the  mind  or  the  will  of  scribe.  He 
sends  messages  of  how  it  was  with  him  when  he 
“met  a  shell,”  and  after  it,  how  it  does  not  hurt  to 
die,  how  you  do  not  know  you  are  dead  till  you  try 
to  go  on  digging  in  the  trench  and  find  you  cannot 
do  it  now;  how  death  proves  not  to  be  death  at  all, 
but  a  fuller  life  and  vigour,  how  one  remembers 


130  THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 

.  i* 

those  he  knew  and  whom  he  loved,  loves  them  still 
more  than  ever  and  receives  their  love.  They  say, 
these  friends  of  mine,  that  this  is  what  is  happen¬ 
ing  to  them.  They  show  me  the  messages  written 
by  their  own  pen,  but  as  something  taught  them,  not 
by  their  own  self. 

What  do  we  think  of  all  this,  we  others  to  whom 
these  communications  do  not  come  ?  Some  of  us 
call  it  a  folly,  some  a  sin.  The  first  are  near-sighted, 
the  last  are  blind.  For  myself,  I  call  it  neither. 
To  call  it  not  folly  but  truth  I  wait  till  the  research 
into  this  thing  is  older;  to  call  it  not  sin  but  faith 
I  will  not  wait  a  day.  For  my  heart  is  inditing  of 
the  same,  or  a  very  like,  good  matter  as  these 
messages  of  theirs,  and  I  know  not  if  another  than 
itself  teaches  it  this,  but  I  am  sure  it  has  not  only 
taught  itself.  Somehow  the  thing  is  wrought 
between  here  and  yonder.  Let  that  be,  however, 
at  least  for  this  now.  Let  it  content  me  that  into 
that  unseen  went  Jesus,  He  who  said  to  a  man 
dying  at  His  side,  “Thou  shalt  be  with  me  in  the 
paradise.”  Then  He  is  there  and  mine  are  there 
with  Him.  Ah!  remember  that,  dear  mother  of 
sorrow,  whereso’er  thou  art,  who  art  longing  to 
feel  the  slain  boy  back  again  at  thy  side,  but  no 
vision  and  no  message  comes  to  make  you  sure, 
and  when  you  call  there  is  none  to  answer  that  you 
can  hear — remember  that  One  is  there  and  thine 
is  with  Him,  and  also  that  One  is  here,  and 
without  Him  was  nothing  made  that  was  made, 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  THREE  DAYS  131 


nor  is  anything  unmade  which  He  has  the  will  to 
make  to  be.  And  He  who  has  willed  that  there 
be  with  Him  in  the  paradise  the  man  slain  by  vio¬ 
lence  of  men,  wills  that  thou  also  be  with  Him,  thou 
still  on  this  quiet  hearth.  Eor  He  that  is  yonder 
is  also  here.  Mother  and  son,  ye  are  together,  on 
the  one  side  and  on  the  other  of  that  throne  which 
was  the  Cross. 

How  all  this  matters  to  me!  Eor  now 

That 

I,  who  shall  go  thither  myself,  know  in  some  which  can 
measure  what  it  is  to  be  there.  It  is  to  he  Hade° 
with  Christ,  for  He  is  there.  Nay,  it  is  to 
he  with  J esus,  for  Tie  went  there,  the  same  who  died 
on  the  Cross  and  was  buried.  And  this  Jesus  we 
somewhat  know  who  and  what  manner  of  man  He 
.  was.  He  was  life-giver  here  to  whoso  would  he  with 
Him  in  a  true  response  of  soul.  Then  He  will  he 
life-giver  there  to  those  with  whom  He  is,  for  He  is 
the  same  there  as  here.  Then  it  will  be  well  for  me 
yonder,  if  God  shall  make  my  soul  alive  unto  Him; 
well  for  me,  this  war-less  scholar  here  in  a  minster 
close — and  for  any  youth  of  this  gallant  fighting  com¬ 
pany,  whose  foot  rings  under  my  window  in  this 
morning’s  air,  whose  blithe  eyes  may  some  morrow 
be  dark  under  Flanders  sod. 


CHAPTER  XII 


LEAVES  OF  THE  SIBYL 

Yet  no;  I  will  not  let  it  be,  as  I  said  I  would, 
even  for  this  now,  that  matter  of  the  “Scripts,” 
the  question  where  they  come  from  and  what  they 
are, — authentic  messages  from  the  departed  or 
only  creations  of  the  scribe’s  own  mind,  proving 
nothing  of  reality  outside  that  mind.  It  is  a  wise 
curiosity  in  me  to  seek  at  least  to  harmonise  with 
such  other  knowledge  of  the  world  of  things  as  I 
seem  to  be  master  of,  this  phenomenon  of  an  auto¬ 
matic  writing,  words  that  write  themselves  by  the 
hand,  but  not  the  mind  and  will,  of  a  human  writer. 

When  our  Dean’s  niece,  that  specially  sane 
young  woman,  of  steady  nerve  and  practical  in 
all  her  ways,  feels  something  rise  within  her  which 
pushes  her  to  take  up  a  pencil,  set  its  point  on  a 
sheet  of  paper,  and  there  let  it  travel  where  it,  not 
she,  wills,  like  a  horse  on  whose  neck  a  lost  rider 
drops  the  rein;  when  that  pencil  marches  forward 
confidently  carrying  an  unguiding  hand,  some¬ 
times  breaking  into  a  runaway  gallop,  which  makes 
the  rider  breathless;  when  the  career  comes  to  a 
stop  as  if  with  exhaustion,  and  see!  the  steed  has 

132 


LEAVES  OF  THE  SIBYL 


133 


known  where  it  was  going,  though  the  dizzied  horse¬ 
man  did  not,  for  here  lies  the  writing,  a  clear  and 
grammatical  sequence  of  meaning; — when  this  thing 
happens,  whose  meaning,  one  asks,  is  it  that  lies 
written  there  ?  What  mind  composed  these  sen¬ 
tences,  that  of  the  woman  with  the  pencil  or  an¬ 
other?  Did  this  bubble  up  from  the  woman’s  sub¬ 
terranean  consciousness;  or  did  it  come  along  the 
earth-floor,  a  telepathem,  call  it,  from  a  living  mind 
elsewhere;  or  did  it  drop  on  her  from  the  clouds, 
a  message  from  a  soul  discarnate?  That  is  the 
question  the  Psychical  Society  labours  to  answer. 
All  I  myself  am  sure  of  is  that  no  one  of  the  three 
wrote  the  words.  ISTo  one.  Words  cannot  be  writ¬ 
ten,  because  they  cannot  be  thought,  by  less  than  two 
minds.  There  must  be,  we  are  mostly  agreed,  both 
a  subject  and  an  object  to  beget  a  thought.  This 
object  cannot  really  be  a  thing  (though  we  com¬ 
monly  say  so,  speaking  of  the  dualism  as  mind  and 
things)  but  a  person;  because  nothing  really  exists 
in  the  world  except  persons,  God  or  some  creature 
of  God’s,  a  personal  being,  a  fragment  of  the  All- 
Mind;  and  what  we  call  things  are  only  detailed 
manifestations  of  some  personality,  human  or  divine. 
It  takes  two  then  to  make  a  thought:  dialectic  is 
not  only  the  best  way  of  thinking,  it  is  the  only 
wav. 

t/ 

Therefore  I  have  to  say,  for  I  can  no  other,  that 
this  script  is  a  register  of  some  act  of  mental  life 
which  the  writer  has  done  by  a  self-interchange 


134 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


with  a  mind  not  her  own.  That  mind  could  he 
either  a  brother  mortal’s,  or  a  brother’s  in  the 
spirit  world,  or,  in  the  case  where  no  created  con¬ 
sciousness  can  be  the  co-agent,  then  the  mind  of  Him 
who  is  the  Father  of  all  spirits.  He  is  acting  upon 
the  woman’s  consciousness,  subliminal  or  normal 
matters  little,  not  through  some  human  personality, 
but  through  some  fact  in  Creation,  which  is  every¬ 
where  God’s  thought. 

Which  of  these  three  is  in  any  given  case  the 
co-agent  is  the  problem  of  our  researchers.  The 
wisest  of  them  assure  me  that  for  some  proportion  of 
these  automatisms  neither  self-suggestion  nor  a  tele¬ 
pathic  origin  in  another  living  mind  is  admissible, 
and  that  they  are  left  to  infer  that  the  script  is  a 
message  from  beyond  the  sense-world.  They  per¬ 
suade  me,  if  it  is  right  to  be  persuaded  by  another 
man’s  report.  What  is  my  own  mind’s  report  to 
myself  ? 


communi-  That  report  is  that  these  writings  are  like 

cation  in  other  thoughts  of  men,  a  communication  of 
Cipher.  .  .  ... 

realities,  but  a  communication  which  may 
be  conveyed  in  cipher. 

I  mean  this. 

When  I  studied  recently  a  series  of  these  writings 
which  some  one  had  printed  for  the  use  of  persons 
interested,  I  had  to  say  to  myself,  “there  is  no  telep¬ 
athy,  of  the  living  or  of  the  discarnate,  here :  these  are 
but  pious  lucubrations  of  the  writers,  self-mistaken 
for  inspired ;  a  cynic  indeed  might  suggest  that  they 


LEAVES  OF  THE  SIBYL 


135 


had  been  printed  in  the  interest  of  a  derisive  scep¬ 
ticism. 

But  also  I  have  studied,  through  the  kind  con¬ 
fidence  of  friends,  some  other  series.  These  would 
chasten  the  sceptic.  Co-operation  of  a  human  mind 
with  the  writer’s  is  everywhere  suggested  by  them. 
For  the  language  is  highly  idiomatic,  and  the  idiom 
is  not  the  writer’s  own,  unless  of  course  we  are 
referred  to  the  subconscious  self — that  still  mythic 
region  where,  as  a  Greek  historian  might  say,  that 
which  cannot  be  scanned  cannot  be  refuted.  And 
the  idiom  varies  in  harmony  with  the  change  of 
speaker,  when  a  new  communicator  announces  him¬ 
self,  and  varies  with  a  dramatic  propriety  in  cases 
where  we  can  judge  of  the  appropriateness.  This 
too,  perhaps,  will  be  referred  to  the  subconsciousness, 
which  may  be  a  sufficiently  good  dramatic  artist — 
since  we  do  not  know  to  the  contrary.  When  how¬ 
ever  a  speaker,  whose  personality  is  known  to  the 
reader,  but  who  is  unknown  in  his  person  or  his 
works  to  the  writer  of  the  scripts,  intrudes  himself 
and  dictates  things  which  are  enigmas  in  a  language 
utterly  like  the  speech  we  knew  in  him,  and  violently 
unlike  the  writer  or  any  one  else;  or  when  there 
arrives  upon  the  sheet  through  the  pencil  of  a  scribe 
who  has  no  acquaintance  at  all  with  the  classic  lan¬ 
guages  a  sentence  in  Latin  or  Greek,  and  scholar’s 
Greek; — in  these  circumstances  the  subliminal  con¬ 
sciousness  asks  a  credit  for  the  authorship  which  we 
are  not  disposed  to  accord. 


136 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


What  then  ?  Are  these  writings  to  he  accepted  as 
what  they  purport  to  be,  messages  out  of  the  unseen 
and  from  the  particular  persons  whose  names  they 
bear?  That  may  be  not  more  than  the  student  tells 
himself,  hut  more  than  he  is  willing  to  affirm  aloud 
while  demonstration  tarries.  The  position  in  which 
this  observer  of  the  phenomena  rests  at  present  is  that 
here  is  certainly  if  not  communication  between  the 
human  consciousness  and  the  spiritual,  yet  com¬ 
munion . 

I  take  a  short  road  to  express  my  meaning.  I 
believe  we  have  here  the  phenomenon  which  in  other 
and  higher  aspects  we  call  Revelation,  Inspiration, 
Prophecy.  All  these  are  communions  of  divine  and 
human;  For  what  is  it  when  God  reveals  a  truth  or 
inspires  a  prophet?  Prophet  and  poet,  as  we  know, 
“when  God  makes  music  through  them/’  can  only 
sound  it  “by  the  framework  and  the  chord’7  of  their 
personal  make;  the  saint  under  inspiration  must 
himself  breathe-in  the  truth  which  the  Spirit  in¬ 
breathes;  and  Revelation,  which  some  dogmatists 
still  try  to  contrast  with  discovery,  is  only  able  to 
reveal  so  much  as  the  recipient  is  able  to  discover. 
The  revealing,  the  unveiling,  is  a  drawing  of  a  cur¬ 
tain  by  a  human  hand  guided  by  a  divine.  In  my 
own  interpretation  of  religious  fact  these  three  are 
diversely  conditioned  acts  of  the  life  unto  God  in  the 
sphere  of  knowledge,  acts  of  self-interchange  between 
the  individual  and  the  universal  mind.  The  psychic 
phenomenon  under  our  study  presents  us  with  a 


LEAVES  OF  THE  SIBYL 


137 


weak  yet  not  unrecognisable  form  of  the  same  inter¬ 
penetration  of  part  and  whole.  It  is  a  special  mode 
in  which  the  human  consciousness  obtains  contact 
and  relation  with  reality;  the  words  written  are  a 
product,  perhaps  only  a  by-product,  of  this  effected 
relation.  A  certain  attitude  of  the  soul  towards  real¬ 
ity  is  expressed,  or  it  may  be  only  symbolised,  as  if 
by  what  I  called  a  cipher.  The  essential  communi¬ 
cation  is  not,  or  need  not  be,  the  ostensible,  just  as  a 
cipher  telegram  may  carry  a  message  wholly  different 
from  the  sense  it  spells  out  upon  the  receiving 
instrument. 

I  frame  this  supposition  upon  the  character  of 
scripts  which  friends  have  shown  me.  In  these  I 
can  find  much  and  animated  exhortation,  little 
particularity  of  direction.  They  have  constant 
reference  to  an  actual  situation  of  the  subject,  but 
they  rarely  or  never  say,  “Do  this  or  do  that,” 
but  “Be  minded  thus  or  thus,”  not  “Such  is  the 
step  to  take,”  but  “Such  is  the  temper  in  which  to 
act.”  They  incite  to  faith,  hope  and  charity;  to 
fearlessness,  endurance,  serenity,  love;  they  make 
promise  of  help  and  foretell  victory.  How  was 
not  this  how  the  old  prophets  prophesied?  And 
apostle  or  evangelist,  did  they  impart  to  the  flock 
a  policy  of  action  or  rather  encourage  a  spirit? 
Christ  Himself,  did  He  frame  a  constitution  for 
His  church,  or  only  enounce  a  principle  of  the  king¬ 
dom?  Well,  so,  I  imagine,  the  message  which  comes 
through  in  these  ambiguous  pencilling^  carries  in- 


\ 


138 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


formation  indeed,  but  it  is  a  spiritual  situation  of 
which  it  informs  us;  it  lends  an  impulsion,  not  how¬ 
ever  to  a  practical  course,  but  to  an  ethical  temper 
which  shall  select  a  course  or  maintain  it.  Such 
a  message  has  at  least  the  signs  of  a  likeness  in 
source  to  the  messages  which  come  to  us  through  the 
medium  we  call  prophecy ;  if  the  writings  of  prophet 
or  evangelist  are  accepted  as  transcripts  of  reality, 
may  we  not  think  it  possible  that  writings  of  humbler 
scribes  may  carry  a  message  from  the  spiritual 
world  ? 

By  what  test  then  shall  we  prove  that  the  possible 
is  the  actual?  For  me  it  can  be  no  other  test  than 
the  experience  that  the  act  by  which  the  communi¬ 
cation  is  sought  and  achieved,  causes  or  fails  to 
cause  more  life  in  the  being  of  the  receiver.  If  a 
consultation  of  the  oracular  wisdom  hoped  for  from 
this  source  has  for  its  result  on  worker  or  quester 
a  stronger  pulse  of  venture  and  firmer  sinew  of  en¬ 
durance,  if  it  is  light  to  the  eye  and  speed  to  the  foot, 
then  this  was  a  faithful  oracle.  Here  was  prophecy, 
as  from  a  prophet  for  whom  we  claim  inspiration,  a 
word  of  the  Lord  as  was  his,  fainter  and  of  slenderer 
import,  but  not  less  sincere.  Whether  it  is  a  com¬ 
munication  from  any  one  in  the  unseen,  or 
cation  or  from  whom  in  that  world,  is  for  another 
Com;  research  than  mine  to  question.  But  if  it 

munion.  #  A 

be  not  a  communication,  a  communion  it  is. 
It  is  a  valid  sacrament,  and  what  passes  to  the  com¬ 
municant  is  a  grace. 


LEAVES  OF  THE  SIBYL 


139 


I  am  much  confirmed  in  this  reading  of  the  fact 
by  something  I  heard  only  yesterday  from  an 
observer  who  has  a  wide  conversance  with  these 
matters.  This  is  that  some  “writers”  find  that  a 
diminution  in  them  of  the  impulsion  to  write  coin¬ 
cides  with  an  intensifying  in  the  sense  of  contact 
with  the  spiritual,  of  a  more  convincing  presence 
of  the  unseen  fact  and  more  urgent  action  upon  the 
practical  life.  That  is,  communication  de-  $„y<ievTa 
creases,  communion  increases,  as  if  the  <fvI'eT0‘<ft- 
Spirit  when  it  would  speak  more  inwardly  speaks 
less  articulately.  The  original  mechanism  of  inter¬ 
course  becomes  less  necessary  when  the  path  of  inter¬ 
course  is  a  more  beaten  track.  Between  the  human 
and  the  unseen  it  is  as  between  the  near  and  dear  in 
inter-human  converse.  Two  intimates  can  sit  to¬ 
gether  and  exchange  their  thoughts  with  little  speech 
or  none :  whence  we  say  that  to  be  silent  together  is  a 
mark  of  a  real  friendship. 

With  this  agrees  an  observation  of  my  own. 
Those  who  seem  most  to  have  this  power  of  spiritual 
communion  seem  least  to  be  interested  in  so-called 
“spiritualism,”  and  even  in  the  scientific  research 
for  evidential  fact.  Why  ?  I  suppose  because  these 
things  are  only  the  mechanics  of  the  intercourse, 
good  or  bad,  apt  or  inept,  honest  or  fraudulent,  gen¬ 
uine  or  delusory,  but  mechanics;  and  these  persons 
have  come  through  the  mechanical  to  the  vital,  from 
the  spiritualistic  to  the  spiritual,  from  knowledge  to 


vision. 


140 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


One  thing  more.  Even  a  research  on  lines  such 
as  mine  has  its  word  to  say  on  that  problem  of  the 
immediate  .  authorship  of  the  scripts.  I  confess 
a  belief  in  the  Catholic  Church,  and  to  do  so  is  to 
profess  an  expectation,  if  not  more,  that  the  author¬ 
ship  is  personal.  Belief  in  the  Church  is  a  belief 
that  the  spiritual  life,  like  the  physical,  is  in  its  ori¬ 
gin  social,  comes  to  the  man  not  directly  from  the 
divine  source,  but  mediately  through  persons  who 
transmit  it ;  he  draws  blood  and  breath  from  a 
family,  and  he  derives  his  knowledge  of  God  from 
the  sacred  family  of  the  Church.  But  as  in  nature 
he  is  born  of  parents  wdio  are  individual,  so  in  grace 
he  is  taught  by  teachers  who  are  persons.  If  then 
the  lessonings  of  the  scripts  derive  from  the  world 
beyond  sense,  they  must  be  given  by  definite  per¬ 
sonalities  there.  Who  should  these  be  if  not  those 
with  whom  our  natures  have  some  vital  tie,  affinity 
of  blood,  of  temperament,  of  association  in  the 
mortal  history  of  the  two  ?  In  all  reason  then  I, 
who  believe  in  the  communion  of  saints,  which  is 
other  name  for  church,  ought,  even  before  evidence 
is  shown  me  by  those  who  possess  a  method  to 
procure  it,  to  expect  this  intercourse  and  commune 
of  personalities  across  the  horizon  of  the  mortal 
senses.  I  do  no  less ;  when  I  speak  to  my  own  mind  as 
reasoner,  I  expect ;  when  as  a  natural  man  I  “speak 
to  my  dear  heart,” — why  then,  something  more. 

One  thing  strangely  moves  me.  It  is  their  sig¬ 
nalling, — if  I  may  speak  of  “them’7 ;  the  way  they 


LEAVES  OF  THE  SIBYL 


111 


can  beckon  to  a  mind  on  our  side  and  provoke 
to  a  parley.  There  will  come  along  not  a  word  but 
an  emblem,  some  love-token  which  stirs  a  dear 
mutual  memory ;  the  wise  pencil  knows  how  to 
design  it  on  the  sheet,  but  the  writer  who  holds  the 
pencil,  stranger  as  he  is  to  sender  and  receiver, 
cannot  decipher.  It  reaches  through  him  the 
mark,  and  presently  a  friend  who  reads  is  looking 
on  the  very  sign-manual  of  his  friend  in  the  Beyond. 
Who  can  find  self-suggestion  here,  who  find  chance 
coincidence  ?  Hot  I.  I  overhear  in  it  a  converse  of 
Yonder  and  Here  “face  to  face  as  a  man  speaketh 
unto  his  friend.” 

How  long  is  it  since  I  wrote  these  pages?  Some 
months  certainly,  and  in  them  has  been  happening 
a  thing  which  sends  me  back  here  to  record  my  ac¬ 
knowledgment. 

“This  signalling”  did  I  write,  their  “love-token, 
which  stirs  a  dear  mutual  memory,”  the  “sign- 
manual  of  a  friend  in  the  Beyond”  ?  And  again, 
“Who  should  these  (personalities)  be  if  not  those 
with  whom  our  natures  have  some  vital  tie,  affinity 
of  blood,  of  temperament,  of  association  in  the  mortal 
history  of  the  two.” 

While  I  was  writing  those  phrases,  what 
vivid  signallings  were  passing  to  some  ot  us,  mond,  or 
from  friends  withdrawn  from  touch  already  k.lfe  an<a 
by  the  fog  of  war,  and  now  engulfed  still 
deeper  in  the  blindness  steamed  up  from  battlefields, 


142 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


to  shroud  away  from  us  those  who  went  out  to  a 
warfare  from  which  they  have  now  discharge.  One 
on  our  side  whom  the  signals  have  reached  has  con¬ 
strained  a  parent’s  heart  to  share  with  the  world  his 
own  intelligence  from  the  Other  Side,  and  admits 
strangers  to  these  new  intimacies  between  Here  and 
There,  intimacies  so  surprising  and  also  so  of  course ! 
Deep  thanks  to  him  he  ours. 

But  in  this  record  the  most  appealing  note  is 
struck  in  the  messages  which,  if  they  speak  truth 
at  all,  speak  the  truth  that  “affinity  of  blood”  can 
outlive  the  battle’s  death-blow,  that  the  bond  of 
family  is  not  cut  by  the  shears  of  mortal  violence, 
that  the  warrior  son  “being  slain  yet  speaketh,” 
and  still  has  his  life  unto  the  home.  We  used  to 
say,  “Not  nations  are  saved,  but  souls.”  It  may 
still  be  true  of  nations.  I  shall  say  it  of  families 


no  more. 


CHAPTER  XIII 


THE  ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS 
“Again  a  little  while  and  ye  shall  see  Me.” 

A  holocaust  !  Here  they  go  into  the  fire,  my  four¬ 
score  pages,  the  lucubration  of  some  weeks  on  the 
story  of  the  Forty  Days  and  the  doctrine  of  the 
Atonement  as  there  enacted.  Here  they  go,  a  score 
at  a  time,  as  the  grate  can  devour  them.  It  is  a 
sacrifice  which  does  not  cost  a  writer  nothing,  this  of 
the  first-born  of  his  mind,  the  fruit  of  his  spirit, 
that  I  say  not  the  travail  of  his  soul.  But  of  let¬ 
ters  as  of  the  human  affair  in  general  it  is  true 
that  “he  that  loseth  his  life  shall  save  it.”  May  it 
he  so  now  as  I  turn  from  my  burnt  sacrifice  to  begin 
again. 

In  that  labour  which  has  thus  ended  in  The 
this  smoke  I  had  set  forth  a  study  of  the  doctrine 
place  held  by  the  Resurrection  fact  in  the  Resurrec- 
whole  work  of  the  Lamb  of  God  that  taketh  *ion  . 

taught  by 

away  the  sin  of  the  world.  Did  the  Christ  the  Risen 
of  the  Forty  Days  take  away  that  sin  after  Lold* 
the  same  manner  as  in  the  days  of  His  flesh  % 

My  study  has  been  too  studious,  my  labour  too 
elaborate.  For  it  is  all  so  simple.  Three  words 

143 


144 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


of  Luke  declare  the  whole  matter,  elfii  avros. 

J esus  stood  in  the  midst  and  said,  “It  is  I  Myself.” 

The  riddles  of  the  Resurrection  story — the  tomb 
found  empty,  the  Body  that  visited  the  Upper  Room 
and  the  lake  side,  the  theories  of  vision  or  of  illu¬ 
sion — melt  away,  not  solved  hut  dissolved,  under 
the  spell  of  those  words,  when  their  meaning  has 
been  grasped,  that  what  Peter  and  his  brethren  saw 
was — Jesus. 

And  the  same  Jesus,  he  of  Razareth,  son  of  Mary, 
brother  to  James  and  Joses  and  certain  unnamed 
wives  of  Razarene  townsmen;  Jesus  the  souks- 
master  of  twelve  chosen  followers,  taken  from  their 
head  three  days  ago,  and  now  again  with  them. 
What  else  than  this  Jesus  could  “I  Myself”  mean, 
spoken  to  these  actual  listeners  ?  More  indeed  than 
this  could  be  meant  and  was  meant,  an  infinite  more, 
though  this  “more”  could  not  yet  be  conveyed  to 
the  mind  of  these  hearers.  But  this  was  meant  and 
this  could  be  conveyed,  that  the  Jesus  known  to  Peter 
and  John  and  Thomas,  to  the  Magdalene  and  the 
other  Maries,  this  Jesus  was  standing  in  the  Upper 
Room,  was  seen  and  heard  and,  if  any  willed  it,  could 
be  felt  by  touch  of  hand. 

Jesus  Himself  was  there,  in  the  same  way  in 
which  He  had  been  there  to  Rathanael  under  the 
fig-tree,  the  Samaritan  by  the  well-side,  to  the 
Pharisees  in  a  synagogue  whose  thoughts  Jesus 
knew,  or  to  these  same  disciples  when  they  sat  at 
supper  and  desired  to  ask  a  question  but  did  not 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS  145 


give  it  words,  till  He  answered  it  unspoken.  The 
way  of  the  presence  on  the  first  day  of  the  week, 
and  in  the  forty  days,  was  a  thought-reading  and  a 
thought-writing,  a  thought-transference  on  the  part 
of  both.  The  witnesses  of  the  Resurrection  knew 
Jesus,  because  they  were  known  by  Him.  There 
passed  a  vital  act  of  mutual  recognition  between 
person  of  Master  and  person  of  disciple ;  each  living 
unto  the  other.  Cleopas  began  to  know  who  was  his 
companion  on  the  road  by  a  burning  of  his  bosom; 
Mary  knew  Him  by  a  leap  of  her  heart,  when  her 
own  name  struck  it  in  an  accent  that  only  one  lip 
could  mould;  Thomas  a  week  hence  will  know  Him 
not  by  the  feel  of  the  scars  but  by  the  tender  irony 
that  bade  him  have  his  wish:  John  will  know  Him 
in  the  morning  dusk  and  whisper  to  Peter,  “It  is 
the  Lord/’  by  a  mystic  tact  like  that  which  in  thick 
darkness  tells  us  there  is  some  one  near;  presently 
on  shore  the  others  will  not  dare  ask  Him,  “Who 
art  Thou  V ’  knowing  by  a  like  touch  it  is  He ;  and 
Peter  when  they  have  breakfasted  will  be  sure  it  is 
no  dream,  not  because  he  has  taken  food  from  his 
Master’s  hand,  but  because  he  was  asked  thrice  if 
he  loved,  and  thrice  been  bidden  feed  the  flock,  and 
who  but  Jesus  only  could  have  done  that,  and  done 
it  so? 


Ah,  but  He  was  seen,  all  the  records  keep  what  was 
repeating,  seen.  What  need  we  any  further  J^e°  see 
witness  than  the  seeing  which  “is  believing”  ?  Lord”? 


146 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Well,  but  the  Ten  saw  Him  in  the  Upper  Room, 
yet  did  not  believe:  they  thought  it  was  a  ghost, 
not  He  Himself,  till  He  spoke,  and  person  met 
person,  and  knew  that  He  Himself  it  was.  Then 
were  the  disciples  glad,  seeing  the  Lord.  Thomas 
was  quite  right  in  doubting,  while  his  friends  could 
only  offer  eye-witness.  Peter  might  have  feared 
the  breakfast  by  the  lake  was  a  dream  (as  one  critic 
has  thought  it),  but  the  after-colloquy — if  that 
was  a  dream,  then  it  was  one  of  those  of  which  it 
is  said,  “Thou  spakest  sometime  unto  thy  saints 
in  dreams.”  It  was  his  Lord  who  spake  in  this, 
for  never  man  could  speak  to  Peter  as  this  man 
Jesus  spake,  for  the  thoughts  which  came  to  birth 
in  speech  between  Peter  and  this  Other  could  come' 
to  birth  by  no  origination  but  the  mutual  action 
of  these  two  selves,  the  interchange  between  these 
personalities,  only  these.  Of  these  two  Peter  was 
one,  then  the  other  must  be  Jesus. 

“But  there  was  seeing,”  some  man  will  say,  “seeing 
with  eyes.  Are  you  ignoring  that  or  how  do  you 
find  place  for  this  evidence  of  eyesight  in  the  account 
of  the  recognition  ?” 

The  visual  presence  was  part  of  the  thought- 
transference,  a  detail  in  the  whole  communication. 
That  is  so  in  the  common  telepathy.  A  dying  man’s 
wraith  is  his  thought  made  visible  to  his  friend  at 
distance,  a  portrait  of  himself  “air-drawn”  by  the 
artist.  Also  it  seems  there  can  be  pictures  (I  have 
seen  them)  on  canvas  or  paper  made  by  telepathy; 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS  147 


a  hand  that  has  no  art  can  produce  in  line  and 
colour  a  design  created  one  must  suppose  by  some 
unknown  painter’s  art,  and  conveyed  to  a  canvas 
through  the  artless  limner’s  consciousness.  Why 
then  cannot  the  vision-seer  paint  on  the  air  a 
portrait  of  his  friend,  taught  by  that  friend’s  per¬ 
sonality  ?  Painting  on  air  and  on  canvas  are 
different  operations  of  art,  hut  this  is  common  to 
them :  both  are  originated  by  a  vision  of  the  “mind’s 
eye,”  which  is  externalised  by  different  methods 
and  in  different  media.  If  telepathy  is  the  cause 
of  the  one  vision,  it  can  be  the  cause  of  the 
other. 

I  was  saying  our  puzzles  about  a  physical  A  dogmat. 
Resurrection  were  going  to  be  dissolved  by  ism  which 

.  .  •  r-  i  r*  mUSt  be 

this  conception  oi  the  event  as  a  return  oi  “born 
Jesus  to  His  friends  in  His  human  person-  again- 
ality.  A  certain  dogmatism  of  many  of  the  faithful, 
and  some  of  the  faithfullest,  must  undergo  such 
dissolution.  Their  particular  envisagement  of  the 
event  of  Christ’s  Rising  must  die  and  be  born  again, 
— their  demand  that  we  should  assert  a  “physical 
resurrection.”  Their  dogmatism,  I  say  it  with  care, 
not  their  belief.  The  faith  they  are  contending  for 
is,  if  only  they  knew  it,  right ;  at  least,  it  is  right  in 
my  eyes;  I  hold  it  with  them.  For  their  faith  is 
that  the  Christ  did  truly  rise,  that  He  did  really 
show  Himself  alive  after  His  Passion,  that  it  was 
no  phantom  but  His  very  self,  that  all  that  had  been 
in  the  Galilean  prophet  who  had  died  on  the  Cross, 


148 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


was  present  in  the  Upper  Room  and  in  Joseph’s  Gar¬ 
den  and  on  the  Emmans  road. 

This  is  their  faith  and  mine.  But  Jones  of 
Pearstead,  when  he  came  over  to  “draw”  me  about 
Donaldson’s  heretical  pamphlet  on  the  Resurrec¬ 
tion  (he  drew  my  covert  blank,  because  I  had  not 
seen  the  pamphlet),  Jones  did  not  know  his  own 
faith  correctly,  but  mixed  it  up  with  things  doubtful 
and  irrelevant.  He  played  the  stalwart  apologist, 
demanding  with  thump  of  list  that  Christian  critics 
of  the  ]STew  Testament  should  accept  “evidence 
good  enough  to  convince  a  jury.”  Pitiful  heavens, 
a  jury!  Twelve  householders  of  reputed  integrity 
who  are  summoned  from  their  counter  or  oven. 
Well,  if  this  were  a  crowner’s  quest,  and  these 
worthies  were  there  to  cross-examine  witnesses  who 
identified  the  person  of  one  found  dead,  and  gave 
evidence  of  the  when  and  where  and  what  of  the 
discovery,  they  would  be  competent  to  fill  the  panel. 
But  the  task  is  not  such.  Physical  things  are 
physically  discerned,  as  spiritual  spiritually.  But 
here  are  metaphysical  things  to  discern,  and  what 
is  J ones  for  a  metaphysician  ?  What  has  to  be  deter¬ 
mined  is  not  an  experience  of  men’s  corporal  organs, 
eye  and  ear,  or  hand,  by  which  similar  fleshly  organs 
were  verified  in  the  apparitions,  but  the  experience 
of  the  most  central  spiritual  consciousness  of  a 
Peter  or  a  Thomas,  the  precise  event  which  happened 
to  their  personality.  This  juror  must  investigate 
and  report  on,  not  the  stimulation  received  by  the 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS  149 


optic  nerve  of  the  eyewitness,  but  the  psychic 
stimulus  and  response  to  it  between  the  unseen 
Reality  and  the  total  personality  of  the  man,  which 
is  the  true  incident  denoted  by  the  witness  who 
said,  “I  have  seen  the  Lord.”  Now  God  indeed 
looketh  on  the  heart.  He  can  measure  the  fulness 
and  correctness  of  that  heart’s  response  and  self¬ 
surrender  to  a  Presence  which  has  passed  by  it, 
and  in  passing  has  stirred  it  with  a  life-provoking 
touch;  He  can  count  the  beat  of  the  pulse  which 
is  a  creature’s  will  energising  towards  the  will  of 
its  Creator.  God  can  look  on  the  heart;  but  your 
juryman,  friend, — can  he  ?  If  he  cannot,  what  have 
I  to  do  with  his  judgment  on  what  the  witness  really 
saw  and  heard?  Eye  of  witness  hath  not  seen  nor 
ear  heard  the  things  which  belong  to  our  peace,  which 
are  the  invisible  world,  and  “they  which  it  inherit.” 
That  visitation  must  be  known  not  by  this  and  that 
sense,  not  by  all  the  senses,  but  by  these  and  that 
which  lies  behind  them  all,  the  spirit  in  the  wit¬ 
ness  which  creates  the  sensitive  flesh  to  be  an  organ 
of  knowledge,  the  personal  being  of  a  man  who 
can  have  intercourse  with  a  personality  that  is 
divine. 

When  I  shall  say  this  to  Jones,  he  will  I  think 
answer  me  not  with  thump  of  fist  this  time,  but 
with  a  dogged  shake  of  the  head,  that  he  does  not 
see  how  my  idea  is  any  better  than  Donaldson’s 
“personal  resurrection  theory,”  which  he  got  from 
some  German  professor.  And  see  what  their 


t 


150  THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 

liberal  theology  has  brought  religion  to  in  Germany, 
where,  says  Jones,  they  have  lost  that  wretched 
Kaiser  his  soul.  (Or  is  it  just  the  other  way,  as  I 
have  been  thinking?)  No,  no;  a  resurrection  of  the 
body  is  the  Church’s  belief,  and  no  other  is  of  use 
to  a  plain  Christian. 

Now  if  I  were  a  Socrates,  I  suppose  I  should  ask 
Jones,  seductively,  to  explain  to  me  what 

The  Res-  '  ^  x 

urrection  exactly  a  “person”  is  and  “personality,”  and 

and  the  a2-ain  wkat  a  “body”  is  and  why  men  have 
bodies.  Then,  if  he  did  not  succeed  in  satis¬ 
fying  himself  or  me,  I  should  ask  him  to  consider  my 
own  humble  understanding,  how  I  could  find  no  bet¬ 
ter  way  of  describing  personal  existence  than  to  say 
it  consists  of  the  highest  form  of  life  we  know;  nor 
any  closer  way  of  defining  body  than  to  call  it  the 
instrument  by  which  one  living  being  can  live  a  life 
in  association  with  other  beings  like  himself:  we 
have  eyes  and  ears  that  we  may  see  and  hear  one 
another,  and  hands  and  feet  that  we  may  do  business 
together.  However,  I  not  being  a  Socrates  and  J ones 
being  a  good  Christian,  I  would  take  a  quite  other 
course,  and  say,  “You  believe,  brother,  with  myself 
in  a  Real  Presence  at  a  Eucharist.”  Row  what  do 
we  mean  by  this  Presence?  Neither  of  us  thinks 
that  the  Christ  is  present  on  the  altar  as  a  Galahad 
sees  it  in  the  legend : — 

I  saw  the  fiery  face  as  of  a  child 

That  smote  itself  into  the  bread,  and  went. 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS  151 


And  I  think  you  will  reject  with  me  the  Transub- 
stantiation  of  the  elements  as  a  bad  translation  of 
Galahad’s  poetry  into  arid  and  ungrammatical 
prose  of  scholastic  logic.  Then  in  what  manner  is 
the  Christ  there,  what  is  the  Reality  of  this  Pres¬ 
ence?  Tell  me  if  it  is  like  this  for  you;  not  always 
but  at  times.  You  have  gone  to  the  altar  with  a 
moral  perplexity  to  lay  before  Christ,  and  as  you 
come  away  your  disordered  thoughts  fall  into  clear 
shape,  as  if  some  one  had  marshalled  them,  and  you 
say  with  Paul,  “I  think  I  have  the  mind  of  Christ,” 
You  have  confessed  a  fault,  and  your  spirit  now  is 
set  at  liberty,  so  as  no  confessor  can  absolve  it.  Or 
you  carried  there  a  chilling  venture  to  have  it 
blessed ;  it  was  a  lump  of  ice  at  your  heart,  and  you 
bring  back  a  live  coal  in  your  bosom.  Or  you  de¬ 
sired  to  see  one  of  the  days  or  at  least  moments 
of  the  Son  of  Man,  and — and — you  saw  it;  craved 
to  feel  upon  you  the  osculum  pads  et  caritatis — and 
you  felt. 

Did  you  do  these  things  alone;  was  it  you  that 
out  of  yourself  created  the  order,  the  freedom,  the 
courage,  the  vision  of  love  ?  Some  of  the  wise 
and  learned  will  say  it  was  so.  “Gigadibs,  the 
literary  man,”  would  tell  you  it  was  yourself  that 
raised  this  sense  in  you  of  order  and  freedom ; 
there  was  actually  no  other  and  nothing  there  but 
you ;  the  Presence  that  seemed  to  be  there  was 
only  your  own  reflection  thrown  by  yourself.  But 
that  is  because  this  literary  man  does  not  know 


152 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


his  world  as  we.  For  we — if  you  ^are  with  me  in 
this — we  know  that  no  one  can  make  anything,  even 
a  reflection,  even  an  illusion,  by  himself.  To  bring 
anything  into  being  needs  two  who  must  between 
them  make  it  to  be,  if  life  is  the  final  fact  of  Being 
as  man  can  know  Being,  and  if  life  is  what  we  find 
it  to  be,  union  of  two,  a  reciprocity  between  a 
conscious  self  and  self.  This  experience  then  of 
yours  was  a  thing  made  by  yourself  and  another 
self  which  ultimately  is  the  divine  reality,  through 
the  union  of  the  two  selves.  There  is  only  to  ask 
what  reality  it  is  you  touched,  what  specific  point 
in  that  reality,  what  part  of  it  had  intercourse  with 
you;  or  in  the  phrase  of  Christians,  what  of  God 
was  this  with  which  you  had  communion.  That 
can  be  declared  only  by  the  special  quality  of  the 
life  which  kindled  in  you  on  the  contact.  Was  it 
an  awareness  of  Another  than  yourself  whom  you 
recognised  as  the  Jesus,  known  to  you  through  the 
witness  of  the  Church  begun  in  tradition  and  Scrip¬ 
ture  and  continued  by  witness  of  all  saints?  Was 
that  mind  in  you  which,  as  you  know  by  that  wit¬ 
ness,  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus?  What  manner  of 
spirit  were  you  of  when  the  converse  had  passed; 
was  it  the  spirit  that  cries  Abba,  Father,  Thy  will 
not  mine  be  done;  the  spirit  of  sacrifice  which  the 
Lamb  of  God,  the  Prophet  crucified,  must  communi¬ 
cate  if  He  lay  His  own  spirit  on  another ;  was  it  the 
spirit  of  self-dedication  to  the  Truth  for  their  sakes, 
your  brethren;  the  spirit  of  peace  as  Jesus  gave  it, 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS  153 


His  peace,  to  those  disciples;  spirit  of  truth  that 
makes  free  and  sanctifies;  spirit  of  counsel  for  a 
venture  that  gives  you  in  that  hour  what  you  shall 
speak  or  do  ? 

Was  it  like  this  for  you,  that  holiest  of  com¬ 
munions;  did  this  thing  happen,  not  at  all  times 
but  at  some  times  ?  Then  that  which  inspired, 
absolved,  inflamed,  empassioned  you,  in  a  word 
made  you  live,  was  He.  Here  was  a  Presence  of 
Jesus,  a  Real  Presence,  the  Divine  Reality  present 
to  you  in  Him,  His  Person.  The  Master  came,  and 
you  were  with  Him. 

He  came,  but  how?  With  what  body?  4,With 
Jesus  had  been  crucified  and  laid  with  the  what 
dead ;  how  then  was  He  raised  up,  with  what 
body  did  He  come  to  you ? 

Do  not  meet  me  with  a  smile  or  a  shrug,  when  I 
say  He  came  to  you,  His  disciples  of  to-day,  with 
the  same  body,  with  which  He  stood  in  the  Upper 
Room,  the  body  that  appeared  to  Simon,  and  that 
Thomas  not  having  seen,  craved  to  see  and  also 
touch. 

For  what  else  is  a  body,  if  it  be  one  of  whatis 
our  own,  than  the  relations  of  mutual  con-  Body? 
sciousness,  subsisting  between  a  conscious  being  and 
other  conscious  beings,  together  with  the  world  of 
matter  environing  that  consciousness?  Or  if  that 
definition  sounds  pedantically  abstract  (though  after 
all  we  cannot  escape  from  using  the  technique  of 
philosophers)  let  us  for  now  say,  that  a  human  body 


154 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


is  the  instrument  by  wbicb  a  person  lives  a  life  in 
nature  and  among  other  persons.  The  senses  of 
sight,  sound,  touch,  and  the  fabric  of  bone  and  flesh 
and  nerve  on  which  these  senses  are,  so  to  speak, 
mounted  for  their  action,  enable  the  person  to  com¬ 
municate  his  thoughts  and  co-ordinate  his  actions 
with  others  like  himself.  This  organ  of  intercourse, 
a  body,  is  created  by  the  personality  which  uses  it, 
as  a  tool  is  made  by  a  workman  according  to  his 
special  craft,  and  the  particular  work  he  means  to 
do.  Our  present  bodies  are  what  they  are  because 
we  need  to  see,  hear,  and  touch  our  fellows  in  the 
universe,  and  because  all  this  has  to  be  done  on 
the  earth-plain.  They  have  so  much  of  solidity  as 
this  solid  environment  requires  of  them.  If  our 
habitat,  were  the  air  we  should  need  wings  not  feet 
for  human  intercourse;  if  the  depths  of  ocean,  eyes 
would  be  useless  in  that  dark,  and  the  sense  of  touch 
the  more  necessary. 

The  question  then,  with  what  body  did  Jesus 
come  after  death,  is  the  question  what  body  He 
required  for  renewed  communication  with  His 
mortal  friends.  It  was  one  by  which  He  could 
make  them  know  He  was  with  them,  and  could 
inform  their  mind  and  influence  their  will.  He 
must  be  seen  and  heard,  and  seen  and  heard  to  be 
the  same  person  as  the  Jesus  they  knew;  He  must 
be  able  to  offer  Himself  to  their  recognition  by 
touch,  if  He  could  not  otherwise  be  recognised. 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS  155 


Therefore  the  wound-prints  must  be  seen,  and  if 
Thomas  had  not  been  satisfied  by  that,  I  doubt  not 
that  he  could  have  also  handled  the  limbs,  which, 
as  I  read  the  tale,  he  did  not  do.  And  why  not? 
Because  conviction  had  now  come  to  him  through 
the  other  senses;  the  personality  which  met  him 
by  intercourse  of  sight  and  sound,  was  Jesus’  self 
without  further  witness;  the  eyes  which  exchanged 
intelligence  with  his,  the  ears  which  recognised 
the  Master’s  very  accent,  the  brain  which  per¬ 
ceived  its  own  thought  and  doubt  read  back  to  it 
in  the,  “Reach  hither  thy  hand  ...  be  not  doubt¬ 
ful  but  convinced,”  these  cried  to  Thomas,  “It  is 
the  Lord,”  and  he  cried  in  echo  of  them,  “My  Lord 
and  my  God !” 

The  Real  Presence  then  of  Christ  to  a  Peter  or 
a  Thomas  was  the  presence  of  His  Personality  to 
the  personality  of  the  disciple ;  the  disciple  was 
made  aware  of  his  Master’s  presence  by  a  sense  of 
certain  relations  which  arose  of  the  one  to  the  other 
person.  The  Body  with  which  Christ  came  to  him 
was  that  cluster  of  relations  which  caused  him  to 
recognise  the  Person  with  whom  he  was  now  in  con¬ 
tact  as  the  same  whom  he  had  known  as  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  They  were  relations  of  vision;  the  hands 
and  feet  and  the  wound-prints  in  them  were  seen. 
They  were  relations  of  audition;  words  were  heard 
and  their  tone  and  accent  recognised ;  and  these  were 
the  more  trustworthy  signs  because  they  carry 
thoughts,  which  are  more  essential  parts  of  person- 


156 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


ality  than  visible  shape  and  colonr  of  limbs.  Less 
trustworthy  again  than  sight  was  the  sign  Thomas 
trusted  most,  that  of  solidity  under  touch ;  for  shape 
and  colour  which  give  expression  to  character  are 
far  more  indicative  of  personality,  than  are  the  mere 
mass  and  density  of  the  flesh. 

The  Real  May  I  not  say  then  that  the  Real  Pres- 
Presence.  ence  a  worshipper  of  our  day  at  the  altar 

is  the  same  fact  as  the  Real  Presence  to  a  disciple 
in  the  Upper  Room;  that  we  in  some  more  blest 
communions  are  witnesses  to  the  Resurrection  of  the 
Lord  ?  Our  personality  recognises  the  Person  of 
Jesus  Christ  through  His  Body  and  Blood  presented 
to  our  sight  and  touch  in  the  bread  and  wine.  He 
said  at  the  First  Communion,  “This  is  My  Body.’7 
Our  brethren  of  the  Church  of  Rome  are  right  when 
they  hold  that  the  words  must  he  accepted  literally, 
and  not  as  metaphor,  though  their  own  literal  ver¬ 
sion  is  faulty  religious  scholarship  and  lowers  incal¬ 
culably  the  true  sense  of  the  original.  But  that  loaf 
which  the  Head  of  the  feast  held  in  His  hand  was 
His  Body  in  the  meaning  of  body  which  we  have 
found  for  ourself.  It  was  being  made  the  medium  of 
a  communion  of  His  Person  with  the  persons  who 
should  take  it  and  eat,  it  was  the  mean  and  instru¬ 
ment  of  a  life  kindled  by  His  spirit  with  theirs.  His 
word  “This  is  My  Body  given  for  you,77  made  it  be 
this  to  them;  these  men  received  and  ate,  and  lo! 
they  became  one  with  Him;  the  bread  had  been  the 
organ  of  an  intercourse,  the  live  bond  along  which 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS  157 


spirit  and  spirit  made  each  with  other  the  self -inter¬ 
change  of  life.  What  was  so  at  that  first  supper  is 
so  at  any  Supper  of  the  Lord  for  us. 

Transubstantiation  is  the  human  child’s  crude 
version  of  the  fact,  but  the  fact  is  there:  Christ  is 
really  present  in  the  elements,  for  through  their 
substance,  as  through  any  of  the  bodily  organs  of 
communication,  the  Divine  Person  passes  to  the 
human  and  makes  that  we  abide  in  Him  and  He 
in  us. 

To  what  end  has  been  all  this  reasoning  with  mv 

o  %J 

brother,  the  vicar  of  Pearstead?  To  this.  I  have 
been  seeking  to  persuade  him  that  the  presence  of 
Christ  to  one  of  us  in  our  holier  moments  is  the 
same  fact  as  His  presence  to  the  first  witnesses  of 
the  Resurrection,  and  that  to  these  latter  He  was 
present  in  the  same  manner  as  to  the  same  persons 
before  the  Resurrection.  I  have  sought  to  establish 
a  continuity  of  being  and  doing  in  Jesus  of  the 
Ministry  wearing  mortal  flesh,  Jesus  of  the  Forty 
Days  clothed  in  a  flesh  not  mortal,  Jesus  presenting 
Himself  to  men  to-day  in  no  fleshly  presence  at  all. 

What  is  the  fact  which  makes  this  continuity? 
It  is  the  continuance  under  differences  of  external 
conditions  of  a  basic  relationship  of  the  Master  and 
the  disciple.  This  relationship  I  find  to  be  the  life 
which  arises  between  them  of  each  to  the  other,  a 
life  which  I  define  as  a  self-interchange  of  Person 
and  person,  an  interpenetration  of  Being  and  being, 


158 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


an  inter-communication  of  spiritual  qualities  and 
energies.  To  appear  to  the  disciple,  to  see  the  Lord, 
are  metaphors  from  physical  vision  to  describe  from 
the  side  of  Christ  and  of  the  soul  this  divine-human 
mutuality.  It  is  an  operation  of  life,  that  name  by 
which  we  come  nearest  in  our  present  knowledge  of 
things  to  the  secret  of  creation,  to  the  secret  name 
which  names  what  God  and  Man  is. 

The  Spirit  Yet  am  I  when  all  is  said  persuading  my 
of  Jesus.  prother  believer  that  J esus,  coming  only  with 
such  a  body  as  I  make  it  to  be,  was  really  He  Him¬ 
self?  More  likely  he  is  troubled  and  reasonings 
arise  in  his  heart/7  supposing  that  when  he  looks 
with  my  eyes  he  “beholds  a  spirit/7  and  that  to  see  a 
spirit  is  but  to  see  a  ghost.  Ah !  there  is  all  his  error, 
that  he  thinks  spirit  is  ghost,  and  forgets  that  One 
Spirit  whom  he  calls  the  Holy  Ghost  is  the  maker 
of  all  realities,  who  brooded  on  the  face  of  the  blind 
deep,  and  all  bodies  of  men  that  be — it  was  Spirit 
that  brought  them  into  their  being.  Then  what 
more  of  Jesus  can  show  itself  to  a  disciple  than  the 
Spirit  of  Jesus,  if  it  is  surely  the  Spirit  of  Him  and 
not  another?  And  what  more  of  me  can  see  the 
Lord  than  the  spirit  of  me,  which  where  I  have  to 
speak  learnedly  I  call  my  consciousness  ?  And  how 
can  my  consciousness  see  anything  any  other  way 
than  just  by  being  conscious  of  it?  That  is  what 
I  declare  as  my  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection  to  my 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS  159 


brothers  of  the  doubt  of  Thomas.  This  it  is  and 
was  “to  see  the  Lord” : — consciousness  of  Master 
touches  consciousness  of  disciple,  and  the  touch  is 
given  back;  the  man  knows  as  he  is  known;  that 
act  of  life,  life’s  highest  within  the  range  of  human, 
which  we  call  an  act  of  faith,  is  wrought  between 
the  two,  and  in  it  the  human  self  has  life  unto  the 
divine.  Whether  eye  meets  form,  and  ear  meets 
voice,  or  neither  sense  awakes  at  the  shock  of  the 
appearing,  are  questions  not  of  the  happening  but 
only  of  its  varying  mode.  The  thing  that  happens 
is  the  meeting  of  a  self  with  a  Self,  the  human  with 
the  Divine.  If  this  has  happened  to  thee,  brother, 
and  a  life  has  sprung  in  thy  soul,  then  “be  not  mis¬ 
trustful  but  assured”;  thou  hast  seen  the  Lord 
Jesus. 

And  it  is  He  Himself,  Jesus  once  of  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth.  For  He  deals  with  a  disciple  to-  Nazareth- 
day  as  He  dealt  then;  reads  the  man’s  thought  and 
writes  his  own  thought  in  the  man.  Even  so  comes 
the  Lord  J esus.  He  works  that  coming  by  the  same 
thought-transference  as  under  Nathanael’s  figtree,  or 
the  well-head  of  Sychar,  or  the  Mount  of  Trans¬ 
figuration.  These  were  acts  of  the  life  natural 
wrought  for  uses  that  lay  in  nature  and  super-nature 
at  once.  Here  again  is  an  act  of  life  that  takes  effect 
in  both  regions,  His  spirit  made  flesh,  our  flesh  be¬ 
coming  spirit.  We  give  it  a  raw  unworthy  name 
from  nature’s  diction,  because  we  have  found  as  yet 


160 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


no  worthier :  we  call  the  witness  of  the  Resurrection 
a  Telepathy  of  Spirit.1 

1  A  footnote  is  wanted  here  by  my  mother.  She  says  it  is  not 
clear  to  her  how,  seeing  and  knowing  Christ  after  His  Resurrection, 
could  be  the  same  thing  as,  what  I  call  it,  an  act  of  life.  Know¬ 
ing  and  living  seem  to  her  very  different  things:  plants  have 
life,  but  not  knowledge ;  and  worms  have  more  life  than  plants, 
but  what  can  they  be  said  to  know?  Will  I  clear  this  up  better? 

I  shall  say  that  even  plants  know  something,  for  they  have  a 
kind  of  consciousness.  Wordsworth’s  faith,  he  tells  us,  was  that 
every  flower  enjoys  the  air  it  breathes.  He  was  the  poet  of 
nature,  and  took  perhaps  a  too  indulgent  view  of  his  protegee ’s 
capacity.  But  still,  if  life  and  pleasure  really  are  one,  as  phil¬ 
osophers  say,  the  flower  must  have  at  any  rate  as  much  enjoy¬ 
ment  as  it  has  vitality.  And  enjoyment  is  a  function  of  con¬ 
sciousness,  and  therefore  may  be  called  a  kind  of  knowledge. 

But  the  worms?  there  I  can  make  my  point  better.  For 
these  at  once  remind  me  of  a  great  man  of  knowledge  who 
studied  them,  and  tempts  me  to  compare  Darwin  and  the  earth¬ 
worm  in  respect  of  their  knowing  and  living.  Now  the  natural¬ 
ist’s  knowledge  of  the  worm’s  habits,  and  that  creature’s 
knowledge  of  the  sod  he  burrows  in  are  the  same  function — 
the  exercise  of  a  reciprocity  between  the  consciousness  of  the 
sage  or  the  worm,  and  the  world  which  encompasses  each.  Both 
acquire  knowledge  of  their  world  by  an  experiment  in  this 
reciprocation,  that  is,  by  attempting  to  unify  their  self,  which 
in  the  one  case  possesses  a  brain,  and  in  the  other  at  best  some 
kind  of  nerve-centres — to  unify  this  self  with  some  portion 
of  the  universal  frame  of  things  which  is  other  than  the  self, 
but  is  in  contact  with  the  self.  The  burrower  in  the  soil  main¬ 
tains  itself  and  grows  by  a  ceaseless  self-accommodation  to  the 
facts  of  earth,  air,  and  water:  the  mind  of  the  researcher  ex¬ 
pands  and  is  vivified  by  an  adjustment  of  his  reason  to  facts 
to  which  a  riper  reason  can  relate  itself ;  he  “  holds  a  mirror 
up  to  nature,”  and  catches  on  it  the  truest  and  distinctest 
reflection  of  which  his  mind  is  capable.  Each  functioning  is 
an  act  of  knowing,  and  each  is  an  act  of  living,  if  life  is, 
as  I  think,  self -interchange.  The  degree  of  vitality  exercised 


ATONEMENT  IN  THE  FORTY  DAYS  161 


is  the  degree  of  consciousness  exerted;  the  worm’s  life  unto 
its  world,  and  the  sage ’s  knowledge  of  his  world,  at  least  in  the 
eyes  of  Who  makes  both  and  spieth  out  all  their  ways,  are  one 
same  vital  operation,  though  with  difference  of  intensity,  range 
and  spiritual  quality.  The  crawling  creature  feels  itself  live 
and  thrive  by  sucking  nutriment  from  the  substances  in  the 
mould,  by  the  vital  chemistry  of  assimilation;  this  is  its  mode 
of  self-interchange  with  environing  nature,  this  act  of  feeding. 
But  the  fact  of  alimentation  is  for  it  the  fact  of  intelligence,  all 
the  intelligence  it  has;  it  knows  the  earth  is  there,  and  knows 
this  much  of  it,  that  by  the  earth  it  lives.  Life  and  knowledge 
are  one  thing  for  this  low  creature.  But  they  are  one  thing 
also  for  that  higher  creature,  the  naturalist,  who  observes  the 
doings  of  the  worm.  The  widening  and  elucidation  of  his 
science  are  so  much  expansion  and  intensifying  of  life  in  that 
organ  of  mental  vision  which  operates  in  the  observation:  not 
the  body  of  the  man  as  of  the  worm  makes  the  response  to 
nature,  but  the  mind,  and  not  his  physique  but  his  spirit  is  vivi¬ 
fied;  but  in  the  high  creature,  as  in  the  low,  the  knowledge  is 
life  and  the  life  is  knowledge. 

I  should  have  liked  to  say  this  more  simply  if  I  knew  how. 
Perhaps  after  all  it  would  be  enough  to  say  that  life  is  the 
whole  fact  and  knowledge  is  a  part  of  the  whole ;  that  there  can 
be  life  where  there  is  no  knowledge,  but  not  knowledge  where 
there  is  no  life.  However,  let  my  footnote  stand. 


PART  III:  THE  ATONEMENT 
THROUGH  LIFE  IN  “ALL  THE 
DAYS” 

CHAPTER  XIV 

ST.  PAUL  AND  THE  ATONEMENT 

“I  am  with  you  all  the  days  even  to  the  end  of  the  world.” 

Wiiat  has  been  done  by  my  imaginary  colloquy 
with  my  brother  priest  ?  He  has  gone  home  to 
Pearstead,  saying  to  himself,  “So  then  Desmond 
wants  me  to  think  that  the  Resurrection  was  one 
of  those  hallucinations  where  a  man  sees  the  figure 
of  a  friend  who  has  died  in  a  distant  country;  that 
the  Jesus  in  the  Upper  Room  was  just — a  wraith. 
Well!!” 

And  perhaps  it  is  well, — if  he  will  turn  his  thought 
round,  and  say  not  that  the  Resurrection  was  like 
the  apparition  of  a  mortal  friend,  but  that  this  visi¬ 
tation  is  in  some  remote  degree  like  that  of  the  Risen 
Master.  St.  Paul  thought  “we  shall  be  in  the  like¬ 
ness  of  His  resurrection.”  Why  then,  when  my  dear 
friend  undergoes  life’s  greatest  event,  the  leaving 
of  it,  may  not  this  fugitive,  faint,  doubtful  visiting 

163 


164 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


of  my  consciousness  by  bis  be  the  momentary  flicker 
of  a  transfiguration  wbicb  befalls  him  in  far-off  like¬ 
ness  to  his  Lord’s  ? 

Ah?  St.  Paul.  Why  have  I  not  sooner  thought 
of  him  in  this  question  ?  I  have  asked  my  friend, 
own  brother  to  Thomas,  the  doubtful,  to  take 
this  wide  leap  of  imagination  from  the  vision  of 
Jesus  given  to  his  first  witnesses  to  the  vision  of  the 
Risen  Lord,  which  may  be  given  in  a  sacramental 
moment  to  one  like  himself  or  me.  And  all  the 
while  the  gap  is  bridged,  the  interval  between  the 
witness  of  Peter  and  the  witness  of  a  churchman  of 
to-day  is  spanned  by  the  experience  of  St.  Paul. 
For  he  claimed  that  he  was  an  apostle  even  as  Peter 
was,  for  “have  I  not  seen  Jesus  our  Lord  ?” 

How  did  this  witness  see  the  Lord;  with 
Paul  “see  what  body  did  Jesus  come  to  the  sight  of 
Paul? 

Lord  ? 

I  do  not  find  that  any  of  my  fellow-Chris- 
tians,  who  are  sure  the  body  with  which  J esus  came 
to  the  Upper  Room  was  identical  with  the  wrecked 
frame  of  flesh  laid  by  J oseph  in  a  vault,  are  ready  to 
affirm  that  this  same  body  was  presented  to  the  eyes  or 
other  organs  of  Paul.  And  I  do  not  quite  know  how 
they  are  to  comport  themselves  towards  the  suggestion 
of  some  critics,  which  they  reject  with  horror  if  they 
hear  it,  that  Paul’s  vision  was  the  illusion  of  an  epi¬ 
leptic  seizure.  Were  I  in  their  place  I  suppose  I 
could  answer  that,  whether  the  witness  were  in  epi¬ 
lepsy  or  in  health  was  not  a  relevant  matter,  if  only 


ST.  PAUL  AND  THE  ATONEMENT  165 


the  apostle  were  able  to  know  that  to  his  person, 
whether  sane  in  body  or  disordered,  the  Person  of 
Jesus  was  certainly  present.  That  answer  will  not 
seem  to  them  available,  not  at  present.  Can  I  per¬ 
suade  them  to  look  at  the  fact  from  where  I  look  %  I 
will  try. 

Let  me  first  give  out  my  own  understanding  of  the 
occurrence  on  the  way  to  Damascus,  the  sudden  vio¬ 
lent  revolution,  as  it  was,  in  the  nature  of  Paul  the 
Pharisee,  the  cataclasm,  as  it  seems,  of  the  Pharisee 
in  him,  and  the  new  creation  of  the  Evangelist.  Then 
let  me,  if  I  can,  harmonise  my  conception  with  the 
whole  history  of  the  occurrence  and  all  that  preceded 
and  that  followed  it. 

My  belief  is  that  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  once_ 
mortal  but  now  “with  God,”  encountered  meeting  of 
with  His  own  Person  the  personality  of  Paul,  person^ 
and  by  an  action  which  we  men  of  this  gen¬ 
eration  would  call  a  transference  of  thought  and  will 
caused  the  man  to  know  the  truth  of  God  as  Jesus 
knew  it,  and  to  will  as  He  willed  it,  the  will  of  the 
Father  in  Heaven.  The  wonder  of  the  “wonderful 
conversion”  lies  not  in  the  abruptness  of  the  trans¬ 
formation  from  persecutor  to  apostle,  for  if  our  eyes 
could  follow  the  process  we  should  doubtless  find  a 
breachless  continuity  in  the  change,  such  as  we  as¬ 
sume  might  be  detected  by  a  closer  insight  in  the  sud¬ 
den  transformations  of  mere  nature.  The  wonder  is 
not  there,  but  in  the  extreme  forcefulness,  and  effec¬ 
tiveness  in  the  sequel,  of  the  interchange  of  self  be- 


166 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


tween  the  person  of  a  mortal  and  the  divine  Reality 
present  to  the  mortal  in  the  Person  of  Jesus.  This  is 
the  supreme  and  hitherto  the  unique  example  of  faith- 
transference  between  the  eternal  and  the  temporal; 
the  Conversion  is  the  great  Telepathism  of  history. 
All  other  manifestations  of  that  divine  agency  must 
be  read  in  the  light  of  this  as  the  interpretative  type. 

And  this  telepathism  was  the  “seeing  of  the 
Lord/’  claimed  by  Paul  when  he  justifies  his  apostle- 
ship.  This  was  the  appearance  by  which  J esus 
showed  Himself  alive  after  His  Passion  and  was 
seen  of  this  witness  to  the  Resurrection.  In  this 
instance  we  are  to  look  for  the  essential  nature  of 
the  Appearances  before  Paul’s  entry  into  the  Church, 
and  of  the  witness  to  the  Rising  from  the  dead  which 
is  borne  in  all  the  days  unto  time’s  end  by  the  be¬ 
liever,  who  comes  to  know  in  himself  the  “power  of 
the  Resurrection.”  How  Peter  and  John  and  Mary 
and  Cleopas  saw  the  Risen  Lord,  and  with  what 
Body  He  came  into  their  presence,  will  he  learnt 
through  the  experience  of  Saul  the  Pharisee  be¬ 
come  apostle.  How  the  Christ  can  “appear”  to  one 
of  us  to-day  in  a  reality  of  being  present,  which 
is  only  less  because  our  capacity  of  that  presence 
is  less  than  theirs,  this  we  may  expect  to  learn  by 
the  same  instructions.  That  expectation,  it  pene¬ 
trates  how  deep ! 

But  I  am  to  make  good  my  understanding  by  com¬ 
parison  of  the  theory  with  the  phenomena.  Psycho¬ 
logical  fact  is  not  often  laid  so  bare  as  the  psychology 


ST.  PAUL  AND  THE  ATONEMENT  167 


of  the  “wonderful  conversion”  is  by  the  thrice-told 
narrative  of  the  incident  (a  hit  of  history  so  unen¬ 
cumbered  by  critical  doubts  as  to  the  ex-  The 
ternal  facts  narrated),  by  the  story  of  Paul  psychology 

.  .  .  of  Paul’s 

in  the  two  periods  which  it  divides,  and  the  conver- 

self-revelation  of  the  Letters.  It  is  ground  so  .  S10n‘ 
well  traversed,  that  the  most  allusive  treatment  will 
serve  us.  No  readier  method  can  be  than  to  point  out 
where  each  of  the  alternative  interpretations  misses 
the  mark,  and  my  own  finds  it.  There  are  the 
theories  that  the  seeing  was  a  “vision” ;  that  it  was 
an  illusion  self-suggested  by  the  seer;  and  Existing 
there  is,  or  in  consistency  there  ought  to  be  theories- 
held,  at  least  by  brothers  of  the  doubt  of  Thomas, 
the  theory  that  the  appearance  was  the  same  as  that 
to  the  first  witnesses  who  saw  a  “physical  resurrec¬ 
tion.”  This  last,  if  any  one  can  hold  it,  is  rejected 
by  the  story.  A  light  shone,  a  voice  was  heard :  this 
is  all  that  is  reported.  It  is  incredible  that  the  fact 
of  a  visual  appearance,  if  it  had  happened,  would 
have  been  left  unreported  each  time,  and  that  by  a 
writer  who  had  studied  and  recorded  the  Appear¬ 
ances  to  the  first  disciples  ;  especially  as  Paul  in  one 
narrative  speaks  of  what  he  did  see,  and  says  that  he 
“saw  a  light.”  Would  he  on  a  later  day  have  written 
that  he  had  not  known  Christ  after  the  flesh, 
if  he  had  ever,  though  that  once  only,  seen 
Him  as  in  the  flesh?  No;  when  the  Lord  showed 
Himself  to  this  new  disciple,  not  in  the  same  wise 
showed  He  Himself  as  to  the  seven  by  the  sea  of 


168 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Tiberias.  Here  was  no  act  of  a  “Resurrection  of 
tbe  flesh.” 

The  “vision  theory”  I  can  find  no  fault  with,  if 
only  we  are  agreed  what  vision  is.  For  me  it  is  the 
perceiving  an  incorporeal  object  with  an  incorporeal 
organ  of  sight.  Grant  me  that  “reality,”  and  the  vis¬ 
ion  theory  is  some  part,  though  part  only,  of  my  own. 

The  theory  of  self-suggested  illusion,  an  appear¬ 
ance  where  there  is  nothing  to  appear,  I  do  not  try 
to  controvert  out  of  a  psychology,  my  own  or  an¬ 
other’s.  I  say  that  Time  is  a  sounder  psychologist 
than  our  best :  the  test  of  illusion  is  in  the  laboratory 
of  history;  can  the  idea  resist  the  solvent  of  dura¬ 
tion,  can  it  last  ?  Illusion  in  religion  is  like  treason 
in  the  State;  it  doth  never  prosper;  and  the  reason 
is  that  if  illusion  prospers  and  persists,  none 
dares  miscall  it  illusion ;  they  must  give  it  the 
right  name  of  fact.  Paul’s  vision  of  the  Christ’s 
presence  has  prospered;  it  persisted  through  the 
visionary’s  unmatched  career,  it  is  persisting 
through  a  score  of  centuries.  Ho  solvent  of 
criticism  can  dissolve  a  reality  which  has  passed 
through  the  chemistries  of  time  and  the  hour,  yet 
by  no  stress  or  mordancy  of  theirs  been  resolved  into 
vapour  or  into  dust. 

But  I — what  have  I  to  do  in  such  a  matter  with 
talk  of  chemistries,  or  even  of  the  arch-chemist 
Time,  the  dissolver  of  all  things?  To  endure,  to 
persist,  is  to  be  something  in  God’s  world;  what¬ 
ever  exists  long  is  real  at  least  with  the  reality  of 


ST.  PAUL  AND  THE  ATONEMENT  169 


existing;  so  the  oak  and  olive  last  long,  and  the 
hills  are  called  everlasting.  All  these  outlast  man 
the  mortal,  but  then  it  is  his  not  to  last  only  but 
to  live;  theirs  is  not  to  live,  only  to  last.  The  test 
of  truth  or  illusion  in  Paul’s  seeing  of  the  Lord  does 
not  lie  in  the  mere  endurance  of  the  sight.  Was  it 
the  living  Jesus  whom  he  saw  in  vision,  and  did  he — 
does  he — by  that  vision  live?  For  the  while,  how¬ 
ever,  let  us  be  content  to  have  cited  the  probation 
of  time. 

Well,  then,  if  Paul,  when  Jesus  met  him  in  the 
way,  saw  neither  the  body  of  the  Lord  nor  Another 
yet  a  hollow  phantom,  the  fume  of  his  own  interpreta- 
mind,  what  was  it  that  truly  happened?  I 
am  to  tell  my  own  story  of  it  now. 

It  should  begin  where  Paul  began,  the  The  story, 
day  when  God  chose  him  from  his  mother’s  womb,  but 
it  shall  begin  where  his  record  begins,  at  the  High 
Priest’s  court  in  which  a  young  man  Saul,  forward 
in  good  works  of  religion,  and  for  their  sake  charged 
with  executive  office,  watches  the  face  of  an  arraigned 
heretic,  and  wonders  how  a  cause  so  foul  should 
so  wear  the  brows  of  grace.  Was  there,  then,  a 
deeper  wisdom  in  Gamaliel’s  counsel  on  an  earlier 
day  than  the  Sanhedrin  or  their  statesman  knew? 
Was  it  certain  that  those  two  frontless  rebels  would 
come  to  naught  like  Judas  and  Theudas?  Could 
it  be  that  these  obstinate  insurgents  might  bring  that 


170 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


man’s  blood  upon  the  Lord’s  anointed  ones,  the  trus¬ 
tees  of  the  faith  ? 

Why  does  the  foolish  question  so  prick  the  mind? 

And  to-day  this  inexplicable  brightness  on  the 
face  of  an  endangered  criminal,  for  whom  Saul’s 
officers  are  waiting  the  sentence,  how  comes  it 
there?  Is  it  the  effrontery  of  a  rebel  fanatic,  the 
vain  confidence  of  a  perverted  Messiah-seeker,  or — ? 
But  how  could  any  least  cross-shimmer  of  the  She- 
kinah  go  astray  to  light  the  face  of  such  an  one, — 
a  blasphemer  of  the  Temple  and  the  Law? 

But  there  the  prick  comes  again,  and  sharper. 

And  he  beats  down  Stephen,  and  makes  havoc 
of  Stephen’s  partisans.  “But  why  do  these  too 
die  like  their  ringleader  with  the — the  gladness  on 
the  face?  Can  they  all  be  frenzied  as  he,  and 
is  this  how  blasphemers  look  when  their  sin  finds 
them  out  ?  Ah,  and  they  tell  me  that  the  deceiver’s 
self,  who  has  been  their  ruin,  he  died  so;  prayeff 
God  to  forgive  us,  said  we  knew  not  what  we  were 
doing.  .  .  .  Did  we  not  know  ?  .  .  .Yet  there  is 
something  here  more  than  I  dare  to  say  we  wholly 
know.  That  Jesus  of  theirs  was  deceiver  and  self¬ 
deceiver;  folly  and  sin  it  was.  Yet  can  I  quite 
spell  the  folly,  quite  name  the  sin  ?” 

With  whom  is  Paul  speaking  this  ?  Is  it  only  to 
himself,  or  to  a  brother  Pharisee  ?  But  that  were  not 
safe,  till  he  knows  all  his  own  mind  on  this  mystery. 
For  mystery  it  is,  and  it  pricks  him  like  a  goad. 

Ah,  Damascus,  and  the  rebels  gone  to  refuge 


ST.  PAUL  AND  THE  ATONEMENT  171 


there!  Work  to  do  still;  no  time  to  waste  on  specu¬ 
lations,  curious  but  scarce  beseeming  a  zealot  of  the 
Law.  Off  then  to  work !  Doing  makes  knowing,  say 
we  not  ?  He  that  does  J ehovah’s  will,  he  shall  know 
of  a  doctrine  whether  it  is  of  God  or  of  man. 
Away ! 

Six  days’  ride  from  J erusalem  gate,  with  a  clump 
of  constables  behind  the  Sheriff  of  the  Sanhedrin. 
Six  silent  rides  in  that  cloddish  company;  lonely 
rides,  but  is  there  One  who  rides  at  his  bridle  un¬ 
perceived  ?  The  debate  goes  on,  insistent,  truce¬ 
less,  tireless,  without  discharge.  The  question 
pursues  him,  masterful,  merciless,  a  tyrant  o’er  a 
slave,  a  ghost  behind  the  haunted,  till  the  haunted 
seems  a  ghost  to  his  own  self.  Is  it  Paul  who  takes 
both  the  parts  in  the  dread  dialectic,  accusing  and 
excusing,  matching,  like  the  player  of  a  game  in 
solitude,  the  right  hand  of  his  reason  against  the 
left?  Or  is  it  not  soliloquy  but  colloquy,  a  drama 
where  passion  antagonises  passion,  a  tragic  drama 
where  a  cause  is  in  deadly  wrestle  with  a  cause,  and 
a  victory  is  a  doom  for  one;  and  if  it  be  such  a 
drama,  who  is  it  that  personates  the  counter-cause 
to  Paul’s? 

Eriends,  have  we  memories  of  our  own  through 
which  a  glimmer  comes  to  our  duller  sense  of  this 
great  one’s  travail  at  the  cross-ways  of  fate  ?  It  was 
that  long,  stark  day-time  in  which  a  soul’s  travail  of 
debate  must  forge  a  decision  before  the  night;  the 
small  decision  of  small  men,  yet  not  smaller,  well  you 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


172 


knew,  than  one  man’s  fortune  in  liis  mortal  time,  or, 
who  can  say,  his  fortune  in  the  times  of  God.  Brain 
was  spent,  heart  was  sick,  the  will  shrunken  to  a 
ghost.  “How  can  I  choose  the  right  who  cannot  know 
where  lies  the  right  ?  Lord,  how  long  ?” 

And  lo,  even  as  you  despaired  of  choice,  it  had 
been  chosen.  Yes,  and  you  had  chosen  true. 

Was  that  wrestle  only  yours,  and  between  your¬ 
self  and  yourself  ?  Did  you  think  it  so,  when 
the  storm  ceased,  and  there  fell  peace  on  you, 
a  peace  of  God  that  passes  all  understandings  and 
counselings  of  man?  Llad  you  been  there  alone, 
without  comrade,  without  antagonist : — did  you 
win  it  yourself  against  yourself  ?  Why,  then, 
it  might  be  this  great  one  was  alone,  and  no 
divine  wrestler  strove  with  him  and  kindled  the 
man’s  strength  with  the  grasp  of  his  own.  It 
might  be  so ;  but  so  it  was  not.  “He,  trem¬ 
bling  and  astonished,  said,  Lord,  what  wilt  Thou 
have  me  to  do  ?” 


This  is  how  I  tell  the  story  of  Paul’s  wit- 

Paul  saw  . 

the  Lord  ness  to  the  Resurrection.  It  is  not  the  full 
of  fifneact  s^or 7 :  there  is  no  language  yet  in  which  I  or 
any  one  can  tell  that;  but  the  tale  so  far  as 
it  is  told  is  true.  The  saint  born  out  of  due  time  did 
see  the  Lord  who  was  dead  and  is  alive,  and  this  Lord 
was  Jesus,  whom  the  saint  was  persecuting.  Lie  saw 
this  Jesus,  but  not  with  that  organ  of  sight  through 
which  John  the  beloved  saw  One  standing  on  the 


ST.  PAUL  AND  THE  ATONEMENT  173 


lake  shore,  in  the  twilight  of  morn,  and  whispered 
his  comrade,  “It  is  the  Lord.”  How  then?  He 
saw  by  the  seeing  of  that  organ,  the  person  of  a 
man  which  can  know  the  person  of  another  than 
he  by  the  act  of  life  in  which  a  self  makes  inter¬ 
change  with  a  self.  The  career  of  the  persecutor 
was  the  side  turned  to  the  world  of  a  souks  experi¬ 
ment  of  living  unto  God.  This  man  verily  thought 
with  himself  that  he  ought  to  do  many  things 
contrary  to  the  name  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  The 
threatenings  and  slaughters  and  “exceeding  mad¬ 
ness”  against  the  followers  of  Jesus  were  the  vehe¬ 
mence  of  a  human  spirit  in  a  storm  of  endeavour 
to  fulfil  itself  by  being  fellow-worker  with  divine 
Keality,  and  doing  that  which  God  will  have  him 
to  do.  The  will  to  live,  the  will  of  a  spirit  to  live, 
and  to  live  unto  That  which  is, — this  it  was  that 
worked  the  ferment  in  that  Pharisee.  He  calls  him¬ 
self  afterwards  the  chief  of  sinners,  yet  the  sin  was 
not  in  the  heat  nor  in  the  havoc:  these  were  the 
motions  in  him  of  a  life  striving  to  live,  but  with  a 
blind  miscarrying  strife,  which  thought  to  do  God 
service  and  thought  all  amiss.  The  sin  was  in  the 
self-reverence,  self-knowledge,  self-control,  which 
looked  on  his  own  things,  and  would  not  look  on 
other  things  whereon  were  the  eyes  of  Jehovah; 
which  revered  the  God  of  Israel,  but  as  Israel’s 
God  and  in  the  image  seen  by  Moses  in  the  Mount ; 
and  knew  the  Law  of  God,  but  as  Paul  the  scribe 
could  know  it  by  the  wisdom  of  the  scribe;  and 


174 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


controlled  the  dispensation  of  the  covenant,  but  as 
Paul,  a  steward  of  that  old  mystery,  willed  to  ad¬ 
minister  the  entrusted  wealth.  This  was  the  sin 
of  Paul’s  offending,  this  was  the  flesh,  the  body  of 
death,  from  which  he  craved  deliverance,  and  found 
in  the  surrender  of,  “Lord,  what  wilt  Thou 
have  me  to  do?”  This,  not  the  jealousy  for  the 
Law  and  hate  of  those  that  kept  not  the  tradition 
of  the  Elders.  These  were  rather  vital  energies  of 
the  creature  seeking  to  respond  to  the  encompassing 
Creator,  and  making  false  response.  The  monitions 
of  the  Spirit,  the  pricks  of  the  divine  goad,  he  thought 
they  were  spurring  him  to  the  adventure  of  cham¬ 
pioning  the  Church  against  seducers;  that  career 
of  inquisitor  was  an  unsparing  bitter  experiment 
in  adjusting  thought  and  action  in  these  ways  to 
the  motions  of  the  All-mind  and  All-power  in  things. 
Reluctantly  in  that  experiment  he  began  to  learn 
how  different  was  his  task;  into  what  strange  fur¬ 
row,  across  what  undreamt  fallowland  of  human 
kind,  his  strength  was  being  driven  by  Heaven’s 
goad  to  draw  the  plough  of  God.  But  the  hand  that 
held  that  goad  was  a  hand  not  in  a  figure  but  in  fact. 
It  was  the  hand  of  a  man,  as  Paul  whom  it  urged 
was  man,  the  hand  of  Jesus,  whom  Paul’s  chiefs  had 
destroyed,  whose  memory  and  works  he  himself  was 
destroying  now.  Through  Jesus  who  died  and,  be¬ 
hold,  He  lives,  the  Reality  is  in  commune  with  the 
creature.  The  mind  that  was  in  Christ  Jesus  casts  its 
image  on  the  mortal’s ;  can  he  mirror  it  back  ?  The 


ST.  PAUL  AND  THE  ATONEMENT  175 


will  which  rendered  the  great  obedience  to  the  Father 
touches  the  strong  servant’s  hand;  dares  the  human 
hand  let  close  on  it  the  divine,  lay  itself  as  liegeman’s 
under  lord’s  ?  The  sacrifice  of  the  Lamb  of  God,  that 
perpetual  sacrifice  of  the  Son  of  Man  made  one  with 
God,  begun  on  the  Cross,  continuing  in  the  eternity, 
never  to  be  taken  away  till  humanity,  or  till  human 
sin  be  taken  away, — that  Sacrifice  is  working  its 
work  of  atonement  on  the  soul  of  Paul.  The  live  coal 
from  the  altar  is  sent  to  touch  His  prophet,  and  his 
iniquity  of  self-will  is  taken  away  and  his  sin  of 
pharisaism  purged. 

These  are  consecrated  images.  There  version11 
must  be  one  more,  my  own.  In  the  speech  wasled 
with  which  this  seeker  of  the  truth  interprets  by  the 
his  own  faith  to  his  own  self,  Jesus,  a  mas-  tc„lepft,3Jy 
ter  in  Israel,  works  the  conversion  of  His 
new  disciple  by  the  telepathy  of  spirit.  He  vibrates 
from  His  Person  to  the  person  of  this  man  an  intelli¬ 
gence  by  which  he  shall  undstand  the  counsel  of  the 
Almighty,  that  to  forsake  self  is  to  find  self,  and 
stirs  an  energy  by  which  the  fire  of  that  sacrifice  shall 
be  carried  in  this  chosen  vessel  far  hence  unto  the 
Gentiles.  And  the  power  rayed  forth  from  the  di¬ 
vine-human  personality  was  not  lost  in  an  unechoing 
gulf  nor  returned  to  the  Sender  void.  The  work 
prospered  in  that  whereunto  it  was  sent ;  the  live  coal 
of  the  Sacrifice  kindled  fire  in  the  prophet ;  the  stroke 
of  grace  was  answered  by  the  pulse  of  faith.  By  the 
abiding  sacrifice  of  love  Jesus,  the  Just  One  made 


176  THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 

perfect  by  obedience,  lived,  as  once  so  now,  the  life 
unto  God  in  tbe  presence  and  touch  of  men  His  breth¬ 
ren,  of  this  man  His  persecutor.  Life  only  can  gen¬ 
der  life ;  only  the  living  can  make  his  kind  to  be  born. 
“Because  I  live,”  saith  Jesus,  “thou,  Paul,  shalt  live 
also.” 


i 


CHAPTER  XV 


“these  have  seen  according  to  their  sight” 

I  took  this  last  to  Langton  and  read  it  to  get  the 
advice  on  it  of  that  now  venerable  churchmansliip  in 
which  he  was  formed;  though  I  feel  it  is  not  really 
his  churchmansliip  against  which  I  measure  myself 
there,  but  the  blessed  old  self  of  him  inside  the 
churchman. 

There  was  encouragement  in  his  air  nearly  all 
the  way  through  the  reading.  lie  gave  me  a  puzzled 
look  more  than  once,  yet  as  if  he  were  even  more 
pleased  than  puzzled.  “Yes,  Desmond,  yes,”  he 
prefaced  a  long,  warm  silence,  which  made  that  new 
phrase  “Fellowship  of  Silence”  creep  into  my 
mind  and  suddenly  convince  me.  Then,  “Yon 
know,  Desmond,  I’d  much  rather  think  about 
this  than  talk,  for  fear  of  spoiling  it.  These  things 
are  so  good,  so  very,  very  good  to  think  of,  till  one 
tries  to  say  what  one  thinks;  then  it  all  goes  away 
from  one.  It  does  from  me,  I  mean;  not  from  you, 
I  can  see  that. 

“But  I  dare  say  what  you  want  from  me  is  some¬ 
thing  very  humble.  You  come  to  me  to  tell  you 
where  it  is  simple  folk  like  me  can’t  get  at  your 

177 


178 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


meaning,  so  that  yon  can  clear  us  up.  Of  course 
I  am  very  dull  about  such  things;  that’s  the  use 
of  me,  isn’t  it  ?  Well  now,  did  you  say  St.  Paul’s 
seeing  of  Christ  was  like  St.  Peter’s;  and,  I  think, 
that  even  our  seeing  of  Him  is  the  same  thing  as 
his?  Do  let  me  quite  understand  that.  For,  you 
know,  the  two  things  seem  to  me  so  very  different 
— that  bright  light,  Jesus  speaking  out  of  the  sky — 
so  very  different  from  St.  Mary  Magdalene,  and 
Jesus  looking  to  her  like  the  gardener,  and  giving 
her  the  name  and  bidding  her  not  clasp  His  feet 
to  hold  Him  there.  ...  Or  St.  Thomas  again.  .  .  . 
J efferson  who  studies  psychical  research  thinks 
St.  Paul’s  vision  was  a  photism ,  and  many  saints 
have  had  the  same.  Do  you  think  you  could  make 
this  plainer  to  us  rather  puzzled  people  ?” 

I  tried.  It  was  not  a  good  try,  but  I  am  glad  he 
got  me  to  make  it,  for  though  I  did  not  satisfy 
Langton,  I  left  myself  better  convinced,  and  perhaps 
a  little  more  capable  of  satisfying  future  listeners, 
— if  I  ever  find  them. 

I  wonder  though  if  the  thing  can  be  done.  I 
mean,  if  it  is  possible  to  give  any  hearer,  who  has 
not  already  got  it  by  nature  or  study,  the  attitude 
of  mind  by  which  one  can  recognise  the  identity 
of  these  occurrences, — one  where  a  witness  says, 
Three  “I  saw  with  these  eyes,  heard  with  these 
“Seeings.”  earSj”  another  where  it  is,  “I  did  not  see,  but 
I  heard  him  and  he  heard  me,”  and  a  third,  the  com- 


ACCORDING  TO  THEIR  SIGHT  179 


mon  case,  in  which  the  witness  can  only  say,  “I  see 
and  hear  nothing  at  all.  Something  is  said,  but  it  is 
in  my  owTn  mind  and  nowhere  else,  only  I  believe  it 
is  true.” 

If  Dr.  Johnson  had  been  sitting  in  Langton’s 
chair,  I  suppose  he  would  have  hammered  the  chair- 
arm  with  his  fist  and  said,  “Sir,  you  may  take 
that  stuff  away  with  you;  you  were  well  to  carry 
your  wares  to  Dr.  Berkeley’s.”  That  is,  if  he  were 
still  clothed  in  that  old  ponderous  robe  of  his  flesh, 
not  clothed  upon  with  the  new  garment  which  God 
giveth  as  it  hath  pleased  Him,  and  to  every  spirit 
its  own.  Wearing  that,  he  is  understanding  me 
well. 

Is  it  possible  then  that  I  can  persuade  this  Doc¬ 
tor,  or  any  of  my  fellow-believers  of  a  like  robust 
intelligence,  that  we,  threescore  generations  later  than 
the  event  in  history,  can  have  a  faith-experience  that 
could  make  us  fellow-witnesses  with  the  saint  who 
saw  Christ  face  to  face,  or  even  with  him  to  whom 
Christ  only  spoke  in  human  syllables  ? 

But  I  do  think  this  can  be.  And  it  is  not  pre¬ 
sumption  in  me.  It  is  the  issue  of  long,  honest, 
urgent  pondering  on  the  saints’  experience  and  on 
my  own. 

Their  high  and  our  humble  experiences  as  wit¬ 
nesses  of  the  Resurrection  differ  to  the  eye  out  of 
all  measure,  but  the  difference  is  to  the  eye.  There 
is  an  element  they  have  in  common,  and  that  element 


180  THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


is  the  very  pith  and  virtue,  the  sum  and  substance 
of  each. 

“I  have  seen  the  Lord” — the  man  who  says  that, 
what  is  the  fact  he  records  ? 

To„see  If  the  fact  is  that  the  man  whose  name 
the  Lord”  was  Jesus  stood  before  this  witness  in  the 

. — what 

was  it  for  same  form  of  flesh  as  that  which  suffered 
Paul?  dissolution  by  the  cross,  then  Paul  is  found 
a  false  witness;  for  this  he  had  not  seen,  and  our 
faith  is  vain  for  his  part  in  the  making  it. 

But  this  is  not  the  fact  recorded  by  the  chief 
preacher  of  the  Gospel  of  the  Resurrection.  What 
he  attests  is  that  he  had  an  intercourse  with  a  per¬ 
sonal  Being  whose  life  was  in  the  eternal  world, 
yet  who  was  the  same  person  as  the  Jesus  of 
^Nazareth,  whose  followers  he  was  pursuing.  With 
this  Being  he  had  conversed,  and  by  that  converse 
he  had  recognised  the  Speaker  as  Jesus,  because 
the  thoughts  interchanged  between  them  could 
come  into  existence  through  a  converse  of  himself 


with  this  One,  but  with  no  other  in  earth  or  heaven. 
This  interchange  did  take  place.  Therefore  Jesus 
was  there. 

If  we  should  try  to  shake  the  credit  of  the  witness, 
as  many  have  tried,  by  suggesting  to  him  that  this 
converse  was  only  in  his  own  mind,  and  the  Inter¬ 
locutor  was  a  figment  of  a  morbid  brain,  disordered 
by  the  “much  learning”  of  a  scholar  pietist,  what 
is  his  answer?  To  a  Festus,  an  uninitiated  in  the 
things  of  soul,  he  can  only  reply  that  he  is  not 


ACCORDING  TO  THEIR  SIGHT  181 

\ 

mad,  but  speaking  sober  truth.  To  an  Agrippa  the 
churchman  he  turns  with  his  “Believest  thou  the 
prophets  ?  I  know  that  thou  believest.”  He 
makes  appeal  to  a  belief  in  the  spiritual  world, 
in  which  God  by  His  Spirit  speaks  with  men,  and 
there  is  intercourse  of  earth  and  heaven.  Eor  the 
appeal  to  Agrippa  was  this;  no  less.  Here  we 
have  not  the  reforming  theologian  defending  a 
heretic  thesis  by  reference  to  the  Church’s  statutory 
creed ;  it  is  the  saint  and  mystic  summoning  a 
fellow-churchman  to  confess  with  him  the  faith  in 
the  Eternal  and  in  man’s  communion  with  the  Divine 
that  speaks  by  the  prophets.  “King  Agrippa, 
what  are  you  and  I  in  the  world?  Are  we  (as  to 
this  Deputy  we  seem)  two  members  of  the  Roman 
empire,  a  princely  and  a  private,  who  presently  will 
be  no  members  of  this  or  of  ought  else,  but  two 
handfuls  of  earth’s  dust,  ashes  that  life’s  fire  has 
left?  Or  do  you  believe  (nay,  but  I  know  it,  for 
how  could  you  not?)  that  God  who  saith  “I  Am”  is 
a  living  God,  and  all  we  live  unto  Him;  that  we 
men  have  our  portion  not  in  this  life  only,  but  also 
in  a  wrorld  eternal,  immortal,  invisible,  and  the 
only  true  world ;  that  the  grave,  which  disen¬ 
franchises  us  of  Rome  and  brings  forfeiture  of  all 
the  flesh,  cannot  disinherit  us  of  heaven,  the  Father’s 
house  where  the  son  abideth  ever?  Fellow  Israelite, 
I  know  that  thou  believest  in  the  Eternal  and  the 
life  of  man  unto  God.  Why  then  should  it  seem 
incredible  to  thee  that  God  should  raise  the  dead? 


182 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


He  has  raised  the  dead;  I  know  it  who  have  talked 
with  One  who  died.” 

what  for  With  that  One  who  died,  Peter  too  had 
Peter?  talked.  What  matters  it  that  this  witness, 
unlike  Paul,  had  sight  of  Plim  and  not  only  speech  ? 
The  sound  of  that  voice,  the  sight  of  those  features, 
these  were  but  variable  action  of  one  same  energy, 
the  life-force  of  a  Person  in  commune  with  the 
person  of  another,  Jesus  and  His  disciple  knowing 
and  being  known,  loving  and  receiving  love,  inter¬ 
changing  the  divine  self  which  was  human  too,  with 
the  human  self  that  by  the  interchange  may  become 
divine.  Did  that  Presence  for  the  one  disciple 
take  form  and  feature,  with  the  other  take  only 
sound  of  mortal  language  ?  It  was  because  each 
saw  according  to  the  sight  of  his  eyes  or  heard 
by  the  hearing  of  his  ears;  saw  as  he  was  framed 
to  see,  heard  as  he  was  gifted  to  understand.  Why, 
even  in  this  inanimate  nature  too  are  forces,  ele¬ 
mental  and  powerful,  which  in  their  invisible  move¬ 
ment  reveal  themselves  at  some  point  of  contact 
variously  according  to  the  varying  matter  through 
which  they  pass.  The  breeze  declares  itself  in 
the  whitening  wave-crest,  the  electric  current  by 
the  fire  that  kindles  on  an  arrest;  the  sun-ray  falls 
on  the  landscape,  but  you  cannot  see  it  till  its  feet 
alight  on  the  earth,  and  then  it  is  diversely  revealed 
as  a  blanched  streak  on  the  highway,  a  green  shimmer 
on  the  fringing  wood,  a  dazzle  on  the  window  of  a 
grange.  It  is  the  same  sunlight  on  all,  and — the 


ACCORDING  TO  THEIR  SIGHT  183 


analogy  may  be  helpful — that  sunlight  itself  is 
there,  it  is  a  presence  of  the  sun,  an  actual  presence, 
on  that  spot  of  earth,  though  a  presence  which 
declares  itself  with  a  difference  of  appearance  as 
that  which  receives  it  differs. 

These  natural  things  I  would  in  a  figure  transfer 
to  Peter  and  to  Paul  apostles,  and  to  humble  dis¬ 
ciples  like  ourselves.  Jesus  appeared  to  each  The 
of  those  two  with  an  actuality  of  presence  “Seeing" 

.of  Peter 

which  was  equal,  but  in  a  mode  of  actuality  and  Paul 
most  contrasted.  J ust  as  in  nature  the  sun-  ~~the  like' 

ness  and 

beam  displays  itself  on  the  sunned  object  the  differ- 
with  a  colour  and  an  intensity  compounded  ence* 
of  two  forces,  the  light  which  descends,  and  the  spe¬ 
cial  fibre  of  the  surface  which  receives  it,  so  the  Ap¬ 
pearance  of  Christ  to  men  was  a  resultant  of  the  two 
factors,  the  appearing  Master  and  the  witnessing  dis¬ 
ciple.  One  and  the  other  witness  saw  the  same  J esus 
and  really  saw  Him,  but  to  that  sight  each  was  a  con¬ 
tribution  in  different  kind  according  to  the  differing 
relation  in  which  they  severally  stood  towards  the 
person  of  Jesus.  Peter  knew  Christ  after  the  flesh, 
knew  Him  as  a  man  of  certain  lineaments,  voice, 
manner,  and  those  marks  of  bodily  distinction,  the 
wounds  of  the  Cross.  These  characteristics  were  in¬ 
tegral  in  the  sum  of  that  idea,  “My  Master,”  and 
could  not  be  separated  from  it.  If  the  Personality 
of  the  Master  is  to  make  itself  felt  as  present,  those 
characters  must  be  there,  or  the  presenting  could  not 
be  effected :  in  more  usual  language,  Peter  would  not 


184? 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


have  had  the  faith  by  which  the  communion  could 
be  brought  to  pass.  In  offering  Himself  to  sight 
with  the  pierced  hands  and  feet,  Jesus  was  acting 
only  as  He  did  with  the  blind  and  the  deaf,  when  He 
put  a  finger  in  the  stopped  ear  and  anointed  the  sight¬ 
less  eye.  It  was  a  sacrament,  enabling  belief. 

But  to  Paul  the  physical  traits  familiar  to  Peter 
were  unknown,  and  had  no  place  in  his  conception 
of  the  personality.  He  conceived  of  the  Crucified 
Prophet  as  a  person  indeed,  and  an  object  of  a  pas¬ 
sionate  hostility,  but  he  conceived  of  His  personality 
only  as  the  vehicle  of  heretical  principles  which 
must  be  fought  and  destroyed;  Jesus  to  him — 
the  Jesus,  that  is,  not  yet  revealed  to  him  “in  the 
way” — was  not  a  body  but  an  idea  embodied.  Some¬ 
what  as  in  politics  the  multitude  regard  a  states¬ 
man  whose  figure  is  unknown  to  them,  not  as 
an  individual  man  of  a  particular  habit  of  body 
and  temperament,  but  as  a  vague  idol  or  shadowy 
bugbear  serving  as  a  frame  to  sustain  before  the 
mind  a  public  policy,  which  they  worship  or  abhor, 
so  would  this  Jewish  churchman  regard  the  dead 
adversary  whose  religious  policy  he  detested.  Jesus 
to  him  was  not  the  Prophet  but  His.  prophecy; 
Saul’s  hitherto  relations  to  Him  were  the  relations 
of  fear  and  anger  and  perturbed  self-conflicting  con¬ 
science  towards  a  principle  of  belief  and  worship, 
the  Gospel,  which  was  antagonising  his  own  principle, 
the  Law.  An  appearance  to  him  of  the  Christ  in  a 
bodily  form  would  have  been  irrelevant  if  not  per- 


ACCORDING  TO  THEIR  SIGHT  185 


plexing  or  misleading.  But  indeed  one  must  think 
it  would  have  been  impossible,  as  impossible  almost 
as  such  an  event  would  be  to  one  of  us  to-day, 
because  he  would  have  been  unable  to  supply  on 
bis  part  that  necessary  factor  in  a  vision,  and  still 
more  in  a  recognition,  the  idea  which  enables  a 
perception  or  the  memory  which  recognises  the 
past.  To  use  again  our  analogy,  the  dusty  high¬ 
way  cannot  receive  from  the  sunbeam  the  green 
shimmer,  nor  the  woodland  catch  the  sparkle  on 
the  window  pane;  but  the  sun  is  present  to  each  of 
them,  and  they  see  him  each  according  to  their 
sight.  So  it  was  that  Peter  must  make  his  com¬ 
munion  with  Jesus  in  His  habit  of  the  flesh  as  He 
walked  in  Galilee,  as  well  as  with  the  thought  of 
the  Teacher  and  the  temper  of  the  Leader,  which 
praised  him  or  rebuked;  hut  Paul  could  make 
his  only  with  Him  whom  he  named  to  Luke  in  later 
days  the  “ Spirit  of  Jesus,”  the  Spirit  which  he  had 
come  to  know,  as  Jacob  knew  the  angel  antagonist, 
by  the  long  wrestle  and  the  blessing  in  which  the 
struggle  was  resolved.  Therefore  Paul  heard  and 
did  not  see.  By  him  the  personality  of  the  Christ 
could  be  recognised  by  the  mind,  not  by  the  organs 
of  the  body,  or  not  in  their  accustomed  function. 
We  go  beyond  our  knowledge  if  we  claim  the  colloquy 
before  Damascus  gate  as  a  physical  occurrence,  an 
actual  vibration  in  the  air  received  upon  the  organ 
of  hearing;  the  bystanders  conceived  themselves  to 
be  ‘Tearing  a  voice,”  but  there  is  no  need,  and  per- 


186 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


haps  no  inclination,  to  treat  as  supernatural  a  fact 
for  which  a  naturalistic  account  is  for  us  moderns 
so  ready  at  hand.  Even  if  we  accept  at  the  his¬ 
torian’s  own  value  the  testimony  of  the  companions, 
their  impression  of  a  voice  might  be  only  a  dumb 
telepathic  reverberation  on  their  consciousness  of 
the  experience  happening  in  their  chief’s. 

A  more  important  distinction  between  the  visions 
of  the  earlier  and  the  later  witness  than  the  differ¬ 
ing  proportion  of  the  mental  and  the  physical  in  the 
consciousness  of  the  two,  is  that  the  first  experi¬ 
enced  the  Resurrection  of  Jesus  as  a  historic  fact, 
the  other  only  as  a  spiritual.  Those  who  were  in 
Christ  before  Paul  not  only  had  known  Jesus  well 
in  His  mortal  time,  and  so  could  affirm  His  identity, 
but  had  seen  Him  “on  the  third  day,”  that  is,  so 
immediately  after  the  separation  caused  by  the 
death  as  to  preclude  a  false  identification  through 
a  confused  or  faded  memory.  They  spoke  to  seeing 
the  Jesus  of  history.  This  could  not  Paul,  or 
nowise  in  the  same  degree  of  historical.  He  could 
not  identify  the  Jesus  who  encountered  him  on  the 
Damascus  road  with  the  victim  of  the  Sanhedrin, 
on  his  own  knowledge,  but  only  the  report  of  his 
adherents.  From  these,  however,  he  could  know  what 
manner  of  man  in  mind  and  character  Jesus  was 
before  the  Passion,  and  with  this  record  he  could  com¬ 
pare  the  Jesus  whose  mind  and  character  he  had 
learnt  in  his  inward  struggle  and  the  vision  in  which 
it  issued,  and  find  that  the  Person  was  the  same,  that 


ACCORDING  TO  THEIR  SIGHT  187 


He  who  now  addressed  him  was  the  Jesus  whom  he 
was  persecuting.  In  technical  language  Paul  could 
identify  his  subjective  Jesus  with  the  objective  his¬ 
toric  Jesus. 

So  presented,  the  position  of  Paul  towards  Paurs 
the  Historic  Resurrection,  seems  not  essen-  seeing  is 
tially  distinguished  from  that  of  any  still  ourown* 
later  saint  or  even  ordinary  believer  who  attains  to 
the  belief  that  the  Being  with  whom  he  has  com¬ 
munion  is  the  Jesus  whose  story  is  in  the  Gospels. 
His  faith  like  the  Apostle’s  is  based  on  the  agreement 
he  finds  between  the  data  of  tradition  and  experience ; 
the  Bible  and  his  own  soul  confirm  one  the  other. 
This  is  so :  the  distinction  between  St.  Paul  and  our¬ 
selves  is  not  fundamental.  Yet  there  is  a  Adistinc_ 
distinction,  and  it  is  one  which  makes  the  tionand 
witness  of  the  Christian  born  out  of  due  time 
to  be  of  a  unique  and  cardinal  value  in  the  Tradition 
of  the  Church.  If  the  strength  of  a  chain  be  in  the 
weakest  link,  and  if  in  the  Church  tradition  that 
weakest  link  is  at  the  junction  of  the  Apostolic  and 
the  Post-Apostolic  age,  of  the  generation  to  whom 
Christ  was  the  object  of  direct  knowledge  and  the 
generation  who  knew  Him  by  report  of  the  elders, 
then  it  is  a  felicity  worthy  indeed  of  divine  ordering, 
that  the  link  which  couples  the  age  that  saw  to  the 
age  that  only  heard  should  be  the  faith  of  the  strong¬ 
est  of  the  faithful,  and  be  the  life  unto  Christ  of 
which  the  story  is  the  fullest  and  the  most  alive.  The 
link  where  most  as  it  seemed  the  strain  falls  on  cred- 


188 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


ence  is  the  link  where  the  strength  is  most.  If  we 
are  timorous  lest  our  soul-experience  of  a  living  and 
present  Christ  should  be  a  subjective  illusion,  and  the 
risen  Lord  an  error  of  history,  we  shall  stay  ourselves 
on  the  strength  of  Paul,  in  whose  person  met  and 
were  knitted  the  two  strands  of  faith,  the  truth  which 
our  fathers  have  told  us,  and  the  truth  which  the  man 
troweth  in  himself.  He  could  know  as  none  of  us  can, 
whether  the  brethren  who  had  walked  with  Jesus 
were  witnessing  to  things  they  knew,  and  he  was 
utterly  sure  that  their  record  was  true;  and  he,  the 
most  potent  personality  of  men  Christian,  perhaps 
of  men  at  all,  so  trusted  his  soul-experience  of  a  Son 
of  God  revealed  in  him  as  the  Jesus  whom  he  had 
persecuted,  that  he  built  on  it  a  personal  life  of  spiri¬ 
tual  fruitfulness  and  the  vast  and  enduring  structure 
of  a  Church;  which,  if  life  genders  life,  and  reality 
issues  out  of  the  real,  are  witnesses  hardest  to  gain¬ 
say,  that  the  believer  had  not  believed  in  vain. 


CHAPTER  XVI 


ON  THIS  WISE  SHOWS  HE  HIMSELF 

“A  woman  when  she  is  in  travail  hath  sorrow  because 
her  hour  is  come,  but  as  soon  as  she  is  delivered  of 
the  child  she  rememhereth  no  more  the  anguish  for 
joy  that  a  man  is  horn  into  the  world.” 

This  joy,  brethren,  is  ours,  now  that  we  know  what 
manner  of  man  was  horn  into  what  manner  of  world, 
when  first  the  disciples  of  the  Crucified  Prophet 
“were  glad,  having  seen  the  Lord.”  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
had  been  born,  by  the  birth  which  is  from  above,  into 
the  world,  that  world  which  is  the  real,  being  as  in 
heaven  so  in  earth. 

We  know  what  manner  of  man  this  is  who  has 
been  declared  to  be  the  Son  of  God  with  power,  by 
the  rising  from  the  dead.  It  is  Jesus,  the  same 
whom  Peter  and  John  and  Mary  loved  and  followed, 
whom  Caiphas  and  Pilate  slew  on  a  cross,  whom 
Joseph  took  down  from  it  and  laid  in  earth.  It  is 
Jesus,  the  same  who  went  about  in  Galilee  doing 
good,  from  whom  a  virtue  went  out  to  others,  and 
these,  if  an  answering  virtue  in  them  came  to  meet 
it,  were  healed ;  who  preached  a  kingdom  of  heaven, 
and  they  that  had  ears  to  hear  and  eyes  to  see  that 

189 


190 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


kingdom  found  themselves  to  be  in  it  and  of  it. 
It  is  the  same  Jesus,  for  John  and  the  Magdalene 
know  Him  again  by  the  voice  that  calls  over  His 
friends  their  name  and,  when  they  look  up,  by  the 
eyes  that  speak  more  clearly  than  the  lips.  But  “We 
who  never  knew  the  eyes  and  voice,  we  know  Him 
by  the  way  of  Him,  which  was  the  same  as  was  His 
way  with  those. 

On  this  wise  does  He  show  Himself  and  this — 
Appear-  Por  we  are  a^one?  in  sorrow  of  the 

ancesof  newly  bereaved,  like  her  in  the  garden; 
J  esus 

something  speaks  to  us,  we  turn,  we  look,  and 
it  is  He ;  death  then  is  not  death,  to  die  is  to  live. 

We  walk  with  a  comrade  conversing  sadly  of 
youthful  hopes,  which  we  trusted  should  have  re¬ 
deemed  some  little  Israel,  hut  time  and  the  event  have 
wrecked;  and  a  thought  that  is  not  mine,  brother, 
nor  thine  sounds  in  us,  “increasing  like  a  bell,”  till 
it  becomes,  “Ought  not  the  men  of  Christ  to  suffer 
first  and  then  to  enter  into  their  glory?”  and  our 
hearts  burn  within  us  till  at  some  breaking  of  the 


bread,  the  smoulder  bursts  aflame  and  we  know  Him 
who  He  was. 

We  meet  our  fellows-in-council  of  the  faithful, 
all  with  anxious,  some  with  desponding  minds ; 
and  one  comes  in  among  us  with  a  light  from  some¬ 
where  on  his  face,  whispering  “I  have  seen  Him” ; 
and  suddenly  One  is  there  in  the  midst  breathing 
a  “Peace  be  unto  you” ;  and  we  know  Him,  all  of 
us,  for  He  stands  there  “as  He  had  been  slain”: 


ON  THIS  WISE  SHOWS  HE  HIMSELF  191 


by  the  wounds  of  band  and  foot  this  is  He,  tbe 
Man  whose  soul  and  body  were  made  an  offering 
for  sin.  , 

But  such  an  one  of  our  company  has  not  been 
there;  he  will  not  credit  John  nor  Mark  nor  any 
testimony  which  cannot  pass  the  scrutiny  in  the 
court  of  the  learned  in  history.  Yet  there  passes 
a  space,  and  why  is  this  one  more  confident  in  his 
loyalty  and  loyal  service  than  we?  Has  he  looked 
closer,  judged  more  narrowly  for  himself,  has  he 
found  the  evidence  in  his  own  soul  ? 

We  go  a-fishing  or  to  other  trade  of  ours,  and  the 
toil  is  barren;  hands  grow  heavy  and  the  heart. 
From  the  dimness  comes  a  word  of  counsel,  and  we 
stare  astonished  at  the  work’s  sudden  yield;  but  one 
with  keener  sight  murmurs,  “It  is  the  Lord.” 

We  rest  awhile  for  hand  and  heart’s  refreshment. 
The  old  ambition  wakes  and  challenges  us:  “The 
Master — was  it  for  the  love  of  Him  or  of  self  that 
you  made  life’s  adventure?”  “He  knoweth  all,” 
we  sigh,  “He  knoweth  it  was  also  love  of  Him.” 
“Then  shall  thy  venture  win,  thou  shalt  save  many 
souls  alive;  feed  thou  my  sheep.”  Thereon  we  see 
as  in  a  magic  crystal  the  doom  of  whom  would 
follow  Him. 

But  why  must  my  fortune  be  less  sweet  than 
this  other  man’s,  my  even  fellow  ?  And  He  answers 
me  as  Jesus  ever  answered,  “Follow  thou  Me.” 

These  are  things  that  happen  to  any  of  us  men 
to-day,  though  I  borrow  old-world  phrase  to  tell 


192 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


of  them.  But  they  happen,  and  when  they  happen 
then  and  by  this,  we  know  that  Jesus  is  risen.  We 
know  it  because  His  way  with  us  is  the  way  He  had 
with  those  who  had  known  Him  after  the  flesh. 
But  that  way  of  His,  what  is  it  ?  It  is  the  way  of  a 
man  with  a  man,  when  the  one  has  life  unto  the  other, 
each  living  by  the  interchange  with  each.  Of  a 
man  with  a  man.  That  which  animates,  quickens, 
makes  to  live  is  not  an  idea,  a  principle,  a  move¬ 
ment,  no,  nor  an  example.  It  is  nothing  abstract, 
impersonal;  it  is  a  concrete  actual  Self,  it  is  a  Per¬ 
son,  it  is  a  Man  Christ  Jesus.  Between  our  own 
self  and  this  Other  Self,  something  happens;  it  is 
a  thought  that  goes  to  and  fro,  and  comes  into 
being  by  that  to  and  fro;  it  is  a  will  that  beckons 
our  will  till  it  springs  to  that  which  beckons,  a 
purpose  meeting  a  purpose  with  an  embrace;  it  is 
the  Telepathy  of  Spirit  making  the  far  to  be  near, 
the  sundered  to  be  together,  the  Christ  who  is  with 
God  to  be  the  Christ  who  is  in  us. 

What  is  this  that  happens,  when  we  name 
The  .  .  rr  . 

happening  it  with  the  name  which  brings  us  nearest  to 
is^anactofthe  reality?  It  is  life  that  happens;  life  at 
its  highest  and  most  wonderful,  but  life,  and 
nothing  new  or  different  from  the  life  we  knew  from 
the  first.  This  is  only  what  all  things  do  that  live; 
they  render  up  themselves  to  that  which  renders  itself 
back  to  them,  and  thereupon  they  thrive;  they  bur¬ 
geon  and  blossom  and  fruit;  a  breath  fills  their  nos¬ 
trils,  a  blood  swells  their  veins;  they  store  up  speed 


ON  THIS  WISE  SHOWS  HE  HIMSELF  193 


in  foot  and  strength  in  hand  and  nimbleness  in  brain ; 
they  harvest  light  upon  the  eye,  garner  music  in  the 
ear.  This  it  is  to  live  when  the  living  creature  is  the 
grass  of  the  field  or  .the  cattle  that  pastures  on  it, 
or  Man  the  Wise  who  tills  it.  This  it  is  when  those 
who  live  are  creatures  such  as  these.  But  when  it 
is  Man  the  Spirit,  Man  with  the  life  personal, — how 
should  such  a  creature  live  unless  spirit  meet  Betweeu 
spirit,  person  make  interchange  with  person,  Spirit  and 
human  enter  and  be  entered  by  the  Divine  ? 

Can  that  be  ? 

Between  the  human  finite  and  the  Divine  Infinite 
is  a  great  gulf  fixed ;  who  shall  go  over  it  ?  Between 
earth  and  heaven  is  a  great  height  reared ;  who  shall 
climb  it  ? 

I  THAT  CROSSED  THE  GULF,  I  THAT  HAVE  ASCENDED, 

I  that  was  Man  and  that  am  Man,  and,  behold 
Me  that  I  am  with  God  as  God. 

My  belief,  mine  who  write  down  these  words,  is 
that  when  Jesus  lived,  died,  rose,  ascended,  then 
and  by  that  action  upon  the  plane  of  huipan  history, 
a  personal  being,  like  unto  a  son  of  man  in  all  that 
man  is  and  has,  entered  into  possession  of  an  exist¬ 
ence  which  was  a  vital  union  with  All  the  world 
that  is,  and  with  God  who  maketh  All.  At  the 
close  of  His  temporal  course,  He  was  born,  as  every 
living  creature  is  born,  into  a  world,  that  is,  into 
an  environment  with  which  His  organism  could 
have  correspondence.  That  world,  by  commimion 


194  THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 

with  which  His  being  must  have  now  its  existence, 
was  not  the  “penfold  which  men  call  earth,”  but  the 
wide  House  of  God,  in  which  earth  with  her 

The  Son  of  _  .  .  _ 

Man  be-  sun  and  stars,  her  time  and  space,  is  the  least 

of  little  chambers.  Of  that  whole  House  of 
God  this  Man  has  become  heir  and  lord,  but 
with  it  also  of  this  little  room  which  nurses  our  hu¬ 
manity,  His  own  childhood’s  nursery  for  a  while,  of 
which  He  does  not  quit  possession,  He  that  can  now 
fill  all  things  with  Himself. 


I  sit  here  at  my  study  window,  that  looks  on  the 
quiet  greensward  under  the  Minster  tower.  Beyond 
its  pinnacles  my  sight  travels  away  along  the  high¬ 
way  of  space  towards  a  goal  which  my  eye  can  no 
more  reach  than  my  foot,  my  mind  scarce  more  attain 
to  than  the  eye.  Yet  I  know  that  at  this  endless 
road’s  unimaginable  end  there  stands  a  Man,  such 
as  I  am  myself  in  all  that  it  is  mine  to  have  and  to 
be,  but  such  as  God  is  in  all  that  is  not  mine  but 
The  God-  God’s.  And  I  know  that  this  Man  is  seeing 
Manseeth  Ine  with  human  eyes,  as  plain  and  near  as 

mo. 

I  could  see  a  friend  standing  in  my  open 
doorway.  I  know  that  a  certain  not  untroublous 
care,  needing  a  counsellor,  lying  in  my  breast  this 
hour,  lies  as  it  were  written  on  a  parchment  before 
His  sight,  and  that  the  decision  blindly  and  dumbly 
taking  shape  within  me  is  not  of  my  devising,  but  is 
a  truth  of  action  created,  as  all  things  are  of  God 
created,  by  the  gift  of  self  in  which  I  cast  this  care 


ON  THIS  WISE  SHOWS  HE  HIMSELF  195 


on  Him,  and  lo!  He  careth  for  me, — for  me  who 
would  judge  nothing  before  the  time  until  the  Lord 
come,  and  behold,  He  is  here  to  judge  it. 

The  wise  and  prudent  tell  me  this  confidence  is 
but  an  illusion.  They  have  studied  it  till  they 
can  tell  me  how  it  was  made.  Every  man  is  God 
unto  himself,  sees  his  own  figure  cast  dilated  on 
the  mirror  of  space,  takes  it  for  the  Other  than  Self, 
makes  a  God  in  his  own  image  and  likeness. 

How  do  I  answer  them  ? 

I  answer  that  a  self  can  make  nothing — no,  not 
even  a  God — by  itself.  It  needs  two  to  make  a 
world,  or  to  make  anything  at  all ;  two  that  can  inter¬ 
change  a  self  and  a  self.  Then  there  can  be  life, 
something  then  can  be  brought  into  being,  a  man 
can  be  bom  alive,  and  God  Himself  become  a  living 
God  to  the  man.  The  two  whereby  the  being 
of  this  man  here  comes  to  be  a  living  soul 
(if  such  he  be,  God  knoweth!)  are  this  man’s  self 
and  the  Self  of  Jesus  Christ  his  living  Lord.  For 
only  one  who  is  human  can  really  mingle  self  with 
a  human  self.  Surely  that  is  why  Jesus  Christ 
was  with  the  Father  before  the  world  of  men  began. 
Without  Him  nothing  could  be  made  that  was 
made,  least  of  all  could  man  be  made.  To  the  mak¬ 
ing  of  this  creature,  man,  came  the  Creator  with  His 
Son,  the  Word,  in  whose  Person  humanity  was 
already  there ,  as  the  flower  to  be  is  already  in  the 
flower  that  is  now  and  bears  its  seed  within  it. 
Therefore  said  God  (said  it  deeplier  than  His  prophet 


196 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


meant  it),  “Let  us  make  man  in  our  image.”  There¬ 
fore  was  it  that  father  Abraham,  so  long  an  age 
before  the  mortal  Birth,  could  yearn  to  see  the  day 
of  Christ,  and  saw  it  from  far  off, — who  now  sits 
at  Jesus’  feet  in  the  Unseen,  and  the  far  is  the  near 
to  him, — even  as  far  is  near  to  me  who  tarry  here 
in  the  Seen,  yearning  as  he. 

Spirit  of  Jesus,  Thou  who  leddest  Paul  and  didst 
“suffer  him  not  when  he  would  have  erred  from  the 
way  thou  sawest  for  him,  pardon  this  thy  servant” 
venturing — yet  nay,  for  is  it  pardon  that  for  this 
is  needed  ? — suffer  not  thy  servant’s  wildered  thought, 
that  feels  after  if  haply  he  may  find  Thy  presence, 
suffer  it  not,  in  this  so  vast  and  chartless  wild  of 
Being  where  thought  must  range,  to  stray  down  any 
path  that  leads  not  whither  thou  wouldst  have  him  go. 

Ah! — but  still,  the  wise  and  prudent,  my  answer 
to  them?  I  have  begun  it;  I  have  said  my  hope 
in  J esus  the  Man  cannot  be  self-made  in  me,  because 
two  must  be  there  to  make  anything,  myself  and 
another  than  myself ;  my  single  self  can  make 
nothing,  not  even  an  illusion.  Good.  But  that 
which  has  been  made  between  whatever  two  are 
demanded  by  my  theory,  what,  they  ask,  is  it?  Is 
it  the  thing  I  persuade  myself  to  call  it,  or  is  it 
some  different  fact  misread  for  it  by  me?  Men  do 
imagine  vain  things,  they  urge;  how  do  you  know 
that  what  you  imagine  is  not  a  vain  thing,  but  a 
fact  and  a  reality;  how  do  you  know  that  what 


ON  THIS  WISE  SHOWS  HE  HIMSELF  197 


you  seem  to  have  commune  with  is  Jesus  the  Man, 
and  not  some  other  thing  which  you  mistake  for 
Him  ? 

And  my  answer  is  that  things  are  known  The  t  t  £ 
to  be  real  or  to  be  unreal  by  the  life  thatreality> 

J  life# 

comes  to  us,  or  fails  to  come,  when  we  at¬ 
tempt  to  live  unto  them,  that'  is,  to  effect  the  inter¬ 
change  of  ourself  with  the  other  self  which  cannot 
be  seen  with  eye  or  felt  with  hand,  but  which  by  some 
intimation  we  surmise  to  be  there.  In  this  as  in  all 
endeavour,  “the  attempt  and  not  the  deed  confounds 
us,”  and  hope  maketh  ashamed.  If,  that  is,  the  at¬ 
tempted  union  fails,  if  the  interchange  does  not 
happen,  and  the  life  does  not  come,  then  our  surmise 
was  the  imagining  of  a  vain  thing,  the  reality  is  not 
as  we  thought.  But  if  the  attempt  is  not  without  the 
deed,  but  brings  a  union  to  pass;  if  when  we  en¬ 
deavour  to  live  unto  the  unseen  fact,  we  find  that  so 
endeavouring  we  do  live,  then  it  is  the  reality  that 
we  are  touching,  and  that  reality  is  such  as  we  sur¬ 
mised  it  to  be,  and  addressed  ourselves  to  according 
to  that  surmise.  Do  not  the  men  of  other  sciences 
make  their  experiment  this  way,  and  this  way  verify 
their  expectation  by  the  results?  Thus  then  do  we 
believers  in  the  Eternal  World  make  experiment  to 
know  if  it  is  there  and  what  like  it  is,  and  thus  we 
verify  it.  We  feel  after  if  haply  we  may  find  in 
the  invisible  one  Jesus,  Man  as  we  are  men,  but 
now  with  a  Manhood  that  “fills  the  wide  vessel  of 
the  universe.”  We  feel  after  and  we  find  Him; 


198 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


we  know  it  is  He  because  at  the  touch  the  fire  of 
life  catches  in  our  soul  and  body;  He  fills  this 
narrow  vessel  of  my  being  as  He  fills  the  universe; 
I  am  alive  unto  Jesus  the  Man. 

“How  do  I  know  that  I  am  alive  unto  Him?” 
How  knows  any  one  that  he  is  alive  at  all  to  any 
thing?  What  cares  any  breathing  man  to  answer 
a  questioner  who  should  bid  him  prove  his  body  to 
be  alive?  Yet  that  question  is  scarcely  less  wise 
than  his  who  asks  proof  that  my  soul  lives.  Life 
is  its  own  proof  to  itself,  and  life  is  not  concerned 
for  any  proof  to  any  but  to  itself.  Yet  some  such 
proofs  there  are  too,  if  the  idle  questioner  has  a 
mind  to  read  them.  A  body  can  prove  its  life  by 
moving  itself ;  the  soul  has  movements  which  can  be 
observed  by  another. 

But  the  man  himself  who  lives,  can  he  find  no 
name  for  the  proof  renderable  to  his  own  self,  by 
which  he  knows  that  he  lives  unto  Jesus,  and  it  is 
no  dream? 

Yes,  one  name  he  can  give,  the  name  I  have  given 
Life  and  already.  It  is  the  joy  of  living.  Joy  is  one 
•i07,  thing  with  life.  Life  is  none  where  there  is 
not  joy,  where  life  is  not  neither  can  there  be  joy. 
These  are  two  fronts  of  one  reality,  two  fronts  which 
it  turns  to  the  mind  of  man,  not  to  God’s  mind  who 
made  it,  and  not  to  the  soul  even  of  the  man  who 
has  it.  Ho  one  should  ask  me  to  make  that  good, 
for  not  the  most  pragmatic  physicist  denies  it  of 


ON  THIS  WISE  SHOWS  HE  HIMSELF  199 


the  lowest  living  thing  he  studies.  Pillar  of  cloud 
and  pillar  of  fire  that  kept  Israel’s  march  from  hurt 
were  not  more  the  same  than  are  life  and  joy. 

But  who  has  had  such  joy  as  the  believer  in  Jesus 
who  died  and  is  alive  for  ever?  From  the  disciples 
who  “then  were  glad,  seeing  the  Lord” ;  from 
Stephen  when  “from  a  happy  place  God’s  glory 
smote  him  on  the  face” ;  from  Paul  bidding  his 
converts  to  rejoice  evermore,  and  again  he  said,  re¬ 
joice;  from  those  later  generations  whose  brows  were 
sunned  with  the  heathen  knew  not  what  good  cheer; 
from  these  far-off  ones  down  all  history  till  to-day, 
the  mystic  gleam  which  travels  the  sombre  field  of 
time,  as  a  sun-ray  from  one  sees  not  where,  will 
wander  and  here  and  there  alight  upon  a  clouded 
plain, — that  gleam  of  a  joy  has  ever  fallen  and  been 
ever  given  hack  from  the  face  of  men  who  in  the 
phrase  of  my  loved  saint  are  not  “ignorant,”  but 
“know  that  Jesus  is  alive.” 

This  our  joy,  my  brothers,  is  fulfilled,  the  joy 
that  a  Man  is  born  into  the  world  which  is  both  earth 
and  heaven.  A  Man.  In  the  world  eternal  and  in 
this  world  of  time  Jesus  lives. 

Because  He  lives,  we  live  also. 

My  mother  will  say  to  me:  “What  you  tell  us 
here  seems  quite  true,  John:  but  I  think  you  must 
be  meaning  something  more  than  I  can  quite  get 
hold  of — Jesus  being  present  with  us,  seeing  us, 


200 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


knowing  us,  speaking  to  us — one  always  did  believe 
in  this,  surely.  How  does  your  way  of  saying  it 
make  any  difference  ?” 

I  shall  say,  “It  has  made  a  great  difference  to 
myself.  Hot  to  what  I  believe  about  Jesus,  but 
to  the  way  in  which  I  believe  it.  Almost  it  is  the 
difference  between  having  a  dream  and  knowing  a 
reality.  For  my  belief  now  is  that  Jesus  not  only 
is  a  Person,  but  a  Person  with  whom  my  own  per¬ 
son  can  have  to  do,  which  it  cannot  unless  the  other 
Person  is  human.  Whenever  men  have  had  a  belief 
in  God  they  have  figured  Him  as  a  Person.  How 
could  they  otherwise,  since  nothing  is  real  in  the 
world  except  persons?  Hothing  else  at  least  is 
real  to  us  as  men;  earth  and  her  brute  matter  are 
real  to  us  as  animals,  not  as  spirits,  as  those  of 
whom  it  is  not  said,  that  man  turneth  again  to 
his  earth  and  then  all  his  thoughts  perish.  This 
is  why  men  have  always  figured  God  as  a  human 
person:  he  could  see  and  hear  as  a  man,  and  watch 
over  His  people,  though  He  neither  slumbered  nor 
slept  like  human  watchers;  could  be  angered,  could 
forgive  and  love  as  men  are  angry  or  are  loving. 
But  they  figured  it  only:  all  was  figure  not  fact. 
God  was  not  a  real  Man,  though  He  did  certain 
things  which  were  like  things  done  by  men.  If  one 
had  done  a  mean  thing  and  confessed  it  to  the  Most 
High,  the  shame  and  pain  were  not  as  if  the  confes¬ 
sion  went  before  a  friend  of  loftier  nature,  and  those 
eyes  of  sad  reproach  clouded  at  the  hearing.  If 


ON  THIS  WISE  SHOWS  HE  HIMSELF  201 

l 

one  had  ventured  a  brave  choice,  the  glory  of  heart 
was  not  as  if  one  had  sprung  to  the  side  of  a  heroic 
father,  a  worthy  comrade  for  him  in  arms.  But 
that  is  how  it  is  in  fact  between  us  and  a  Christ 
who  is  Jesus,  the  Son  of  Man.  Verily  ‘near  Him 
is  near  fire’ :  fire  that  scorches  up  corruption,  fire 
that  swells  the  veins  with  the  heat  of  love  adven¬ 
turing.  Ah,  yes,  it  is  so.  The  difference  is  between 
dream  and  waking  fact,  between  life  in  a  world  of 
shadows  that  will  break,  and  life  in  a  world  actual, 
imminent,  encompassant,  urgent,  and  never  to 
pass  away.  O  dear  Mother/’  I  shall  plead  with 
her,  “listen  if  the  difference  be  not  like  something 
I  will  tell  you  of,  which  is  of  this  very  season  in 
which  your  soul  and  mine  are  vexed  with  this  whole 
vexed  world  of  man. 

“You  remember,  neither  of  us  can  forget  ever,  one 
of  those  Raemaker  cartoons  we  saw  together.  It  was 
the  Kaiser’s  waking  in  the  imperial  bedcham¬ 
ber.  A  valet  is  calling  him ;  brings  him  the 
morning  cup.  The  author  of  our  world-misery  is 
raising  from  the  pillow  a  face  on  which  a  smile  of 
complacency,  afterglow  of  pleasing  dreams,  is  dying, 
and  an  affright  is  dawning  there  instead.  He  says 
to  himself,  ‘I  have  just  had  a  delightful  dream 
that  the  whole  thing  wasn’t  real.’  But  the 
whole  guilty  thing  is  real;  and  to  that  dread  real¬ 
ness  he  wakes,  to  that  ghostly  merciless  presence, 
that  iron  face  of  doom.  All  yesterday  it  watched, 
all  night  has  watched,  to-day  is  closer  to  him.  He 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


202 

is  that  prisoner  of  my  childhood’s  tale,  who  wakes 
in  the  ‘iron  shroud/  the  cell  with  nightly  narrowing 
walls,  which  at  the  last  must  meet  and  grip  their 
victim’s  flesh  out  of  being. 

“Mother,  one  night  I  dreamed  that  picture.  I 
woke,  and  as  it  shuddered  off  my  mind,  it  was  as 
if  my  eyes  too  were  unclosing  to  find  ‘the  whole 
thing’  is  real,  but,  for  this  unworthy  believer  in  a 
Christ  who  is  Jesus,  not  more  real  than  it  is  blest. 
Old  words  of  the  faithful  in  old  days  sang  them¬ 
selves  in  my  brain.  ‘His  compassions  fail  not,  they 
are  new  every  morning’ ;  aye,  His  compassions,  the 
Man  who  knows  what  the  passions  are  of  man,  once 
having  been  of  like  passions,  and  can  share  them, 
can  compassionate  indeed.  This  is  my  reality,  the 
solid  and  abiding  world  which  has  me  for  its  creature 
— the  world  of  which  the  light  falls  from  these  brows 
of  tenderness  dawning  on  me  through  slumber’s  dusk, 
the  world  of  which  the  air  is  breath  indeed,  being, 
spirit,  very  air  of  heaven,  spirit  divine,  all  spiritual 
and  yet  human  all.  That  air  is  about  my  bed  and 
will  be  about  my  path;  those  eyes  spy  out  all  my 
ways,  and  shine  to  light  my  feet  in  them. 

“And  another  charmed  word  from  the  poetry  of 
ancient  faith  floated  round  me  with  an  enchantment 
twice-enchanted  now.  ‘When  I  wake  up,’  my  heart 
whispered  me,  then  hushed,  ‘When  I  wake  up,  even 
from  a  mortal’s  slumber,  I  shall  be  satisfied  with  Thy 
likeness.  ...  I  shall  see  Thy  face,  O  Master:  that 
vision  of  Thee  shall  all  fulfil  my  being.’  ” 


PART  IV:  THE  DIVINE-HUMAN 

JESUS 


CHAPTER  XVII 

THE  DIVINITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST 

Joy  then  is  ours,  who  have  known  that  a  Man  is 
born  into  the  Eternal  World,  because  we  know  that 
Jesus  is  risen.  And  yet  I  cannot  go  on  my  way 
rejoicing  in  this  if  I  am  to  go  on  it  alone,  and  not 
in  company  with  others  sharing  the  joy.  Will  all 
the  brethren  share  it?  Hot  at  once,  some  of  them, 
and  I  foresee  what  will  hold  them  hack. 

They  will  think — it  always  has  been  so — that  if 
we  declare  the  Risen  Lord  to  be  a  man,  Jesus  the 
son  of  Mary,  we  shall  he  denying  the  belief — than 
which  what  else  matters  ? — that  He  who  rose  was 
the  Son  of  God.  They  will  say  this  doctrine  of 
mine  is  not  Christianity  but  an  Humanitarianism. 

What  shall  I  say  to  keep  them  with  me  ? 

I  shall  begin  with  this.  AVhen  you  and  I,  brother, 
confess  with  the  mouth  that  Jesus  Christ  is  God, 
what  is  it  that  we  do?  We  utter  certain  syllables 
upon  the  air,  but  what  more  than  this  happens  ? 
What  is  it  to  believe  in  the  heart  that  Jesus  is  God? 


203 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


204 

Your  answer  will  be  as  mine,  that  you  cannot  tell 
it  in  words,  because  there  are  no  words  for  the  telling 
of  it;  yet  what  one  believes  in  the  heart  one  also 
knows  in  the  heart,  though  there  only;  and  you 
know  that  to  believe  this  of  Jesus  is  to  be  in  strength 
and  peace  and  joy  of  heart.  Yes,  you  say  with 
me  that  you  are  sure  this  belief  is  true  because  to 
hold  it  ministers  life. 

Well,  but  part  of  this  life  which  the  belief  minis¬ 
ters  is  life  in  the  mind  of  us,  is  a  vital  energy  of  our 
thought.  Thoughts  can  in  some  measure  be  told 
in  words,  indeed  they  cannot  be  thought  at  all 
except  by  some  kind  of  language.  Some  words 
then  there  must  be  for  this  thought  which  comes  to 
us  when  we  believe  in  the  divinity  of  Jesus.  What 
words  do  you  find  for  yours  ? 

The  I  will  tell  you  the  words  I  find  for  myself, 

manner  ln  confessing  Christ  to  be  the  Son  of  God,  I 
Divinity  declare  my  belief  that  J esus  alone  of  all  men 
of  Christ.  pefore  or  since  lived  a  life  unto  God  which 

was  a  perfect  life.  By  that  I  do  not  mean  only  that 
He  was  without  sin,  though  I  declare  that  also.  I 
mean  that  the  interchange  of  selfhood  between  His 
Human  person  and  God  was  a  perfect  interchange: 
all  that  Jesus  was  in  His  human  being  was  harmon¬ 
ised  with  all  that  the  Father  is.  I  see  not  how  there 
can  be  expressed  in  preciser  words  the  entire  identity 
of  J  esus  with  God,  the  truth  declared  when  He  said, 
“I  and  my  Father  are  one.” 

Thus  then  I  understand  the  Godhead  of  Christ  on 


THE  DIVINITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST  205 


the  side  of  His  relation  to  God  the  Father.  They 
have  the  life  of  each  unto  each,  which  is  the  life  of 
all  of  the  One  to  all  of  the  Other.  This  1  T  . 

1.  In  rela- 

definition  of  the  Divinity  of  Christ  presents  tion  to  the 
perhaps  to  the  mind  of  most  men  a  less  vivid 
and  easily  realised  picture  of  divine  fact  than  does 
the  credal  term  “God  the  Son,”  which  raises  a  con¬ 
crete  image :  hut  the  claim  it  makes  of  a  divine  posi¬ 
tion  of  Jesus  in  the  universe  is  in  truth  much  more 
definite  than  the  claim  asserted  by  the  image  of  son- 
ship  ;  and  it  seems  also  to  declare  the  co-equality  with 
more  adequacy  than  does  the  figure  drawn  from 
human  parentage;  for  to  that  clings  a  note  of  sub¬ 
ordination  and  inequality  in  a  son.  A  perfect  life 
of  the  One  to  the  Other  is  no  doubt  a  halting  human 
image  for  the  unimageable  reality,  but  it  brings  my 
own  mind  a  little  further  on  the  way  to  truth  than 
does  the  metaphor  from  mortal  sonship.  All  that  son 
can  be  to  father  is  taken  up  into  it,  and  something 
is  added  which  is  more  than  son  can  be.  The  mutual¬ 
ity  of  thought,  affection,  purpose  that  is,  or  that  is 
conceivable,  between  child  and  parent  is  there;  but 
this  paternal-filial  mutuality  has  the  limitation  that 
there  is  not  equality  in  it,  for  one  is  before  and  one 
is  after  other;  and  this  limitation  is  transcended  by 
our  definition. 


206 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


2  inreia-  But  the  Godhead  of  Christ  on  the  other 
tionto  side,  that  of  His  relation  to  man,  how  do  I 

Man  ' 

understand  this:  how  is  Jesus  now  as  God 
to  us  ?  One  can  say,  by  help  of  vagueness  and  am¬ 
biguity  in  the  title,  that  Christ  is  God;  but  how  do 
we  think  of  a  human  personality  that  has  survived 
death  as  having  the  attributes  of  divinity,  and  the 
divinity  of  very  God  ? 

As  I  found  the  divinity  of  Jesus  in  the  perfect¬ 
ness  or  absoluteness  of  Ilis  life  unto  God,  so  I  find 
The  in-  it  in  the  infinity  or  absoluteness  of  His  life 
msLife  unto  men.  He  is  able  now  to  give  life  unto 
unto  men.  an  men.  In  that  is  His  Godhead.  Or,  as 
I  ought  rather  to  say,  in  that  is  so  much  of  His  God¬ 
head  as  I,  a  man,  am  able  to  apprehend. 

Jesus  of  Hazareth,  while  in  the  world  of  time  and 
space,  communicated  life  to  those  who  proved 
capable  of  it  within  that  circle  of  men  and  women 
whom  His  personality  could  reach.  These  were 
few.  But  Jesus  when  He  “entered  into  His  glory” 
could  communicate  life  to  every  soul  receptive  of 
it  wherever  its  station  in  the  time-world  or  the 
eternal.  He  did  thus  impart  life  to  the  group  of 
disciples  with  whom  He  had  converse  in  the  Forty 
Hays.  He  did  so  in  the  event  which  we  describe 
as  the  Effusion  of  the  Spirit,  or  with  more  realism 
as  the  Church’s  birth  into  a  full-conscious  life;  in 
the  intercourse  to  which  St.  Paul  witnessed  under 
the  name  of  the  “Spirit  of  Jesus,”  which  deterred 
or  prompted  the  movements  of  his  mission,  or  of 


THE  DIVINITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST  207 


“the  Lord  who  stood  by  him,”  with  counsel  or  reas¬ 
surance  at  moments  of  difficulty;  and  in  the  inter¬ 
course  which  the  same  Apostle  claims  in  all  his 
epistles  to  he  the  universal  and  necessary  experi¬ 
ence  of  the  believer  as  a  man  who  is  “in  Christ,” 
and  in  whom  Christ  is.  That  claim  has  been  the 
assertion  made  in  the  mouth  of  all  its  more  vital 
members  at  every  time  by  the  great  society  of  men 
and  women  into  which  the  primitive  body  of  believers 
has  expanded.  The  humblest  of  these  can  profess 
an  experience  identical  in  character,  if  remote  in 
degree  of  intensity,  with  that  of  an  Apostle  who 
trod  the  roads  of  Anatolia  in  the  piloting  presence 
of  the  “Spirit  of  Jesus,”  or  of  another,  who  on  a 
morning  by  the  lake  re-vowed  allegiance  to  the 
Master,  when  that  Master’s  personality  had  tran¬ 
scended  time,  yet  forsook  not  the  old  mortal  inter¬ 
course. 

The  Divinity  of  Jesus  as  towards  mankind  is 
conceived  then  by  me  to  lie  in  this  universality  of 
His  impartment  of  life  to  men.  A  potential  univer¬ 
sality,  it  is  true,  not  an  actualised,  though  progres¬ 
sively  made  actual.  To  declare  this  is  to  declare 
the  person  of  Jesus  to  be  infinite;  and  that  is  to 
declare  Him  to  be  God.  As  the  Creator  is  infinite 
and  makes  all  of  finite  life  that  is  made,  so  is  Jesus 
the  Man.  As  Man  and  by  a  force  which  is  man’s, 
and  can  be  energised  even  in  the  mortal  condition 
of  humanity,  namely,  this  force  of  Life-transference 
(called  in  one  special  direction  of  it  telepathy)  Christ 


208 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


makes  all  of  spiritual  life  that  is  made  within  the 
spheres  of  humanity.  That  interchange  of  His 
person  with  the  person  of  another  by  which 
He  made  life  spring  in  apostle,  prophet,  evangelist, 
or  plain  Church  member  is  exercised  by  the 
same  vital  contact  upon  every  soul  of  man  in  the 
present  or  in  the  future ;  and,  as  I  ventured 
to  speculate  in  an  earlier  page,  also  upon  the  souls 
whose  days  of  the  flesh  had  ended  ere  His  began, 
yet  to  whom  He  can,  being  infinite,  go  and  preach 
in  that  “prison”  of  an  existence  from  which  not  yet 
the  Christ  had  made  them  free. 

Infinity  of  power  to  make  men  live,  power  to 
redeem  from  death  all  men  everywhere  in  all  time, 
power  to  work  that  which  the  Father  worketh 
hitherto,  the  re-making  of  man  in  the  image  and 
likeness  of  God,  when  some  mystic  counter-power, 
sin  or  the  Fall,  had  marred  the  image  made  by  the 
first  creative  stroke — to  find  this  in  the  Risen  Jesus 
is  to  find  Him  to  be  as  God  the  Creator  is  on  the 
side  of  His  Personality  turned  towards  man.  That 
which  the  Creator  does  to  man  is  done  through 
Christ  and  by  the  Humanity  of  the  human  Jesus, 
and  without  Him  is  not  anything  done  that  is  done. 
This  is  to  confess  Jesus  to  be  divine,  and  with  the 
divinity  which  we  name  when  we  speak  of  the  God¬ 
head  of  the  F ather. 

But  if  I  declare  Jesus  of  Nazareth  who  rose  from 
the  dead  to  be  as  God  in  the  infinite  fulness  of  His 
life  in  God,  and  as  God  in  the  infinitude  of  His 


THE  DIVINITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST  209 


power  to  make  men  live,  wliat  does  my  faith  lack, 
my  brother,  which  your  faith  has?  You  ask  me, 
Do  I  believe  in  the  Son  of  God?  I  answer,  Who 
is  He,  that  I  may  believe  in  Him?  If  there  is 
more  that  you,  friend,  have  come  to  know  of  Him, 
tell  it  me,  that  I  may  know  it  too. 

And  if  it  be  so  that  you  can  add  nothing  to  me, 
because  neither  of  us  nor  any  other  can  know  That 
the  Christ  as  He  is  God,  why  then  let  us  all  which  can 

i  i  .  be  known 

the  more  try  to  know  oi  the  Christ  that  of  the  Son 
which  can  be  known  and  named.  The  in-  of  God* 
visible  things  of  God,  said  Paul,  are  known  by  the 
things  which  are  seen,  the  heavenly  facts  are  char¬ 
actered  in  earthly  fact.  Paul  thought  of  Nature — 
the  nature  in  which  as  yet  Jesus  was  not  a  part — 
as  the  mirror  of  divinity,  a  mirrow  how  dim,  blurred, 
ruffled,  and  distorting.  But  we  may  see  now  within 
that  Nature,  as  in  a  glass,  not  dimly  but  in  clearest 
lineaments,  the  image  of  Him  who  is  invisible  :  we 
scan  the  express  image  of  God  in  the  human  fact 
among  Nature’s  facts,  which  is  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
mortal  once  and  now  eternal.  Let  us  search  out  this 
which  is  not  of  the  unsearchable  mvsteries.  Let  us 

«y 

learn  all  that  we  have  not  as  yet  tried  our  best  to 
learn  concerning  the  Christ,  what  He  is  to  us,  what 
He  does  to  us  as  He  is  a  Man ;  a  Man  who  has  entered 
into  Llis  glory,  but  in  that  glory  is  no  less  and  for 
ever  Man. 

“And  last  He  hath  appeared  unto  me  also,” 
murmurs  the  latest  and  least  believer,  “for  that 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


210 

which  I  live  is  He,  when  most  I  know  myself  to  be 
alive.” 

If  we  should  never  come  to  learn  more  than  this,  - 
yet  even  so  we  should  have  enough.  Is  it  not  so  ? 
For  we  have  peace  and  joy  in  believing  that  Jesus 
the  Man,  the  slain  and  glorified,  the  dweller 

Peace  and  .  .  . 

joy  in  be-  and  worker  now  both  in  eternity  and  m  time, 

thatjesus  1°  everV  one  us  God  an(l  Man. 

is  God  and  As  God  He  is  infinite  in  presence,  is  about 

our  path  and  about  our  bed,  and  spieth  out 
all  our  ways ;  as  Man  He  is  human  in  His  presence, 
and  draws  us  with  those  same  bands  of  love  and 
cords  of  a  man  by  which  mortal  soul  and  soul  are 
knit,  so  that  thought  and  will  of  one  become  thought 
and  will  of  another,  and  person  has  with  person  the 
mutual  gift  of  self  which  makes  the  life  of  human¬ 
kind.  The  joy  of  believing  this ! — that  this  Presence 
is  divine  inasmuch  as  it  is  unto  all,  but  human  inas¬ 
much  as  it  is  unto  each ;  that  about  our  path  and  bed 
and  spying  all  our  ways  is  a  Companion,  who  can 
bear  Himself  as  a  man  with  a  man,  whose  thoughts 
can  be  our  thoughts  and  His  ways  be  as  our  ways, 
who  can  weave  my  being  into  one  life  with  Him  by 
threads  of  the  mind  of  a  fibre  that  can  intertwine, 
and  who  by  strands  of  purpose  that  cross  and  grip 
can  knit  my  mortal  will  into  one  strength  with  the 
Eternal’s. 

The  joy  of  this;  ah,  and  the  awe!  For  we  who 
have  thought  we  could  welcome  the  nearness  of  the 
Christ,  while  we  conceived  of  Him  as  a  Provi- 


THE  DIVINITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST  211 


dence,  can  we  so  welcome  Him  as  a  Friend?  For 
is  it  so  with  one  of  ns  and  some  unseen  friend,  who 
has  been  the  seen  friend  in  mortal  days,  that  there 
is  only  joy  and  no  fear  at  all,  when  we  think  upon 
the  intimacy  of  one  who  is  of  “the  company  of 
heaven”  ? 

Do  we  indeed  desire  the  dead 

Should  still  be  near  us  at  our  side? 

We  rejoice  in  his  counsellings,  comfortings,  en- 
couragings;  but  a  compunction  shivers  through  us 
as  we  image  the  friend’s  withdrawing  eyes  when 
some  false  step  or  unworthy  mood  threatens  to 
separate,  like  a  sin,  between  us  and  our  soul’s 
lover. 

Yes,  and  so  is  it  with  the  One  Lover  of  the  soul. 
There  may  be  not  the  joy  of  believing  in  the  Risen 
Christ ;  but  the  power  of  our  believing — that  is  here. 
For  power  upon  us  there  is  in  our  forecasting  vision 
of  a  cloud  gathering  upon  that  brow  of  love;  power 
to  forestall  the  faulty  act,  to  transfigure  the  un¬ 
rightful  thought.  It  is  the  power  of  the  Resurrec¬ 
tion;  the  power  breathing  upon  humankind  of  the 
Glorified  Humanity. 

Humanity.  Nay,  that  word  must  be  bettered.  It 
has  been  ready  in  all  mouths,  but  what  has  been 
its  strength  in  any  heart  ?  The  Humanity,  the 
Manhood — it  is  nothing  in  the  world,  or  nothing 
that  can  be  known  or  felt  by  us.  Not  the  Manhood 
do  I  confess,  but  Jesus,  Son  of  Mary,  the  Man. 


212 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Therefore  “my  friend  shall  look  me  through  and 
through/’  though  I  he  a  breathing,  fleshly,  sinful 
son  of  man,  and  my  friend  be  a  Man,  and  the  very 
Son  of  Man. 

Here  is  the  awe  of  it,  but  here  also  is  the  joy. 

Even  so  come,  Lord  Jesus,  even  so. 

*  *  *  *  * 

“What  does  my  faith  lack,  my  brother,  which 
your  faith  has?”  So  I  asked  a  page  or  two  back. 
This  faith  But  I  must  be  bolder.  I  must  begin  to  ask, 
the^e18’  aWhat  does  your  faith  who  believe  in  Christ 
deemerby  the  Son  of  God  lack  which  mine  has,  my 
has  veri-g>  faith  in  Jesus  the  Son  of  God  ?  This  it  lacks 
fi cation,  which  mine  does  not  lack — Verification.  I 
know  that  my  Redeemer  liveth,  know  it.  For  that 
Jesus  in  His  Ministry  redeemed  His  disciples,  gave 
them  life,  atoned  them — this  is  not  belief  only,  it 
is  knowledge.  It  is  the  witness  of  a  history,  not  the 
conclusion  of  a  philosophy.  That  Jesus  has  been 
redeeming  men  ever  since,  this  too  is  knowledge  not 
belief;  it  is  the  verified  record  of  the  Christian 
Church  to  which  in  “all  the  days”  each  story  of  a 
Christian’s  faith  adds  its  new  atom  upon  the  cumulus' 
of  certitude. 

But  of  the  Son  of  God  as  apart  from  and  beyond 
Jesus  what  is  your  knowledge?  Is  it  knowledge,  as 
men  speak  of  knowing?  It  is  indeed  already  the 
fruition  of  your  faith ;  of  knowledge  it  is  still  but  the 
aspiration  and  endeavour. 

And  again,  as  the  result  of  this  life-giving  which 


THE  DIVINITY  OF  JESUS  CHRIST  213 


redeems  is  a  thing  verifiable,  so  too  is  the  process. 
Faith-transference,  telepathy  of  spirit,  is  a  matter 
not  of  speculation  but  of  knowledge.  Telepathy  is 
not  an  hypothesis  but  a  law  of  nature.  Telepathy 
is  an  ascertained  functioning  of  human  organism 
by  which  the  higher  life-motions,  those  of  mind  and 
will,  are  operated  in  the  sphere  of  the  sensible. 
Reason  would  therefore  count  on  finding  presently 
that  the  highest  life-motions,  those  of  soul,  are 
operated  by  the  same  functioning.  But  experience 
does  not  disappoint  reason.  In  the  record  of  the 
Ministry  we  have  seen  Jesus  imparting  life  to  his 
disciples  by  an  action  identical  with  the  telepathy 
which  is  the  discovery  of  positive  science.  In  the 
record  of  the  Church  we  have  seen  the  members 
of  that  society  propagating  and  maintaining  the  faith 
by  an  action  of  the  faithful  upon  their  brethren, 
converts,  scholars,  children,  which  is  the  same  in 
kind  as  that  of  Jesus  in  His  Ministry — a  life  of  their 
own  souls  lived  in  contact  with  other  souls  and,  by 
the  vibration  of  it  received  and  answered,  kindling 
the  like  life  in  them.  Because  these  lived  (may  we 
not  say  in  the  phrase  of  Jesus?)  those  lived  also. 

And  yet  again.  “He  that  believeth  on  the  Son 
of  God  hath  the  witness  in  himself,”  saith  John. 
It  is  so.  The  witness  that  verifies  the  life  received 
from  Jesus,  the  final  witness  of  it,  the  irrefragable, 
is  in  the  self.  But  not  as  Son  of  God  in  severance 
from  the  Son  of  Mary  is  the  Christ  and  the  life  He 
gives  verified  in  the  believer’s  self,  and  made  to  be 


214 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


not  belief  but  knowledge.  He  knows  a  life  be  has 
nnto  One  who  is  in  the  Unseen,  and  of  tbis  life  be 
knows  tbe  nature :  it  is  a  life  wbicb  is  tbe  response  of 
bis  person  to  a  Personality  human  as  bis  own,  and 
having  a  humanity  such  as  was  that  of  J esus.  What 
that  humanity  was  is  known  to  him  by  tbe  report  of 
men  wdio  companied  with  Him  in  tbe  flesh,  and  of  all 
disciples  in  all  times  since  who  believed  their  report, 
and  in  their  own  experience  proved  it  true. 

Of  that  humanity  the  believer  discerns  the 
authentic  touch  in  those  vital  impulsions  which, 
“like  a  wind  bearing  health  from  lands  of  health,” 
visit  his  mortal  soul  and  interpret  their  immortal 
source.  He  has  essayed  to  commune  with  the 
Master  of  whom  the  prophets  have  told  him,  and 
the  communion  has  come  to  pass ;  the  Divine 
Breath  has  brought  him  life  from  a  land  of  life.  He 
had  heard  of  Plim  by  the  hearing  of  the  ear,  but 
now  his  eye  sees  Him,  beholding  by  ken  of  spirit 
Him  that  is  invisible  to  sense. 

I  do  assure  myself  that  to  know  Jesus  the  eternal 
Son  of  Man  by  the  life  unto  Him  which  is  found 
in  vein  of  the  human  spirit  when  it  seeks  commune 
with  the  Spirit  of  Jesus  is  not  a  belief  but  is  a 
knowledge.  Yes,  a  knowledge  even  as  men  call  know- 

There  is  a  w^en  that  which  knows  is  not  the  soul  but 
science  of  the  sense.  Of  the  souks  nature  too  there  is  a 
science ;  this  like  the  others  must  be  followed. 

This  is  the  faith  in  the  Son  of  Man  which  I  hold 
fast  and  will  not  let  it  go. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 


THE  MAN  ATONING  MAN 

“We  have  found  Him  of  whom  Moses  in  the  law 
and  the  prophets  in  the  Gospel  did  write, — Jesus 
of  Hazareth,  the  Son  of  Mary.”  That  is  the  message 
with  which  I  can  now  go  to  greet  any  friend  who¬ 
ever  has  been  with  me  on  holy  quest  of  the  Christ. 

Will  my  Hathanael  meet  me  with  his  Canthe 
doubt,  “Can  ought  so  good  as  man’s  salva-  Manhood 
tion  come  out  of  this  insignificance,  this  atone- 
Xazareth  of  our  mere  humanity?  Can  the  ment? 
Christ  deliver  His  brethren  by  the  power  of  a  man¬ 
hood  which  He  shares  with  the  brotherhood,  in  a 
measure  indeed  how  unequal  but  in  a  character  so 
like? 

And  my  friend  must  be  answered  as  was  he  with, 
“Come  and  see.”  Only  experience  of  his  own  will 
make  him  sure  that  a  Man  born  of  Mary,  reared  in 
Hazareth,  can  be  the  King  who  redeems  Israel  from 
all  her  sins.  Let  him  draw  near,  like  Philip’s 
friend,  and  learn  whether  a  life-current  passes  to 
his  spirit  from  the  spirit,  the  human  spirit,  of  a 
Man,  the  same  with  whom  Philip  and  his  friend 
had  speech;  whether  that  Man  is  able  to  read  his 

215 


216 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


unspoken  reasonings  under  a  fig-tree’s  skelter,  and 
to  send  without  voice  to  carry  it  that  Man’s  faith 
into  this  other’s  soul. 

If  he  shall  find  that  such  a  stroke  of  life  does  pass 
to  his  mortal  nature  from  somewhere  in  the  Unseen, 
and  that  the  quality  of  this  life  and  the  character 
of  the  stroke  which  carries  it  are  that  quality  of 
life  which  the  Jesus  of  history  once  communicated, 
and  that  manner  in  which  He  conveyed  it;  if  light 
in  counsel,  strength  in  decision,  cheer  in  gloom,  hardi¬ 
hood  in  peril,  and  sometimes  along  a  bald  or  shadowed 
road  the  surprisal  of  an  inconsequent  delight,  come 
to  him  borne  on  the  breath  of  tradition,  which  wafts 
a  memory  of  Him  who  taught  from  Nazareth — then 
Experience  he  wiH  believe  that  the  Jesus  of  history  is 
oflife  the  Person  with  whom  his  own  personality 

received  .  . 

must  is  in  the  communion  which  makes  to  live, 
answer.  qqe  will  have  attained  the  faith  which  is 
made  in  us  when  Tradition  and  Experience  with 
diverse  voice  declare  the  self-same  truth.  He  has 
come,  and  seen  and  known.  But  he  knows  only  for 
himself.  When  he  shall  desire  to  make  the  Christ 
known  to  another  friend,  he  can  only  do  that  which 
was  done  to  himself,  can  only  draw  this  new  quester 
with  him  to  come  and  see  if  Jesus  of  Nazareth  can 
be  indeed  the  Christ  who  shall  redeem  Israel. 

But  I  come  back  to  myself.  What  have  I  found 
in  finding  that  Christ  who  is  God  and  Man  is  our 
redeemer,  by  the  virtue  even  of  His  Manhood  ? 
Is  it  something  only  for  myself,  an  incommunicable 


THE  MAN  ATONING  MAN 


217 


treasure  of  knowledge,  which  I  cannot  share  with 
my  brother,  which  he  cannot  touch  until  he  dis¬ 
covers  it  all  afresh  for  himself? 

It  is  this  incommunicable  thing  indeed:  that  is 
first  and  finally  what  my  hid  treasure  is  to  me. 
Nothing  profits  a  man  unless  he  saves  his  own  soul, 
and  that  salvation  he  can  impart  to  no  one  else. 
But  as  it  is  with  life’s  less  great  experiences, — 
bitterness  which  is  the  heart’s  own,  joy  with  which 
stranger  intermeddles  not, — that  the  joy  or  sorrow 
is  the  man’s  alone,  hut  his  thoughts  concerning  it 
can  in  some  degree  he  laid  before  his  neighbour  and 
be  counsel  and  strength  to  him  in  his  own  war  of 


a  life,  so  it  is  with  the  supreme  experience.  The 
life  unto  Christ  Jesus  can  be  known  only  by  being 
lived  by  who  would  know  it;  when  he  knows  it 
he  can  tell  no  one  what  the  actual  life  in  his  being 
is;  hut  something  he  can  tell  of  his  thoughts  about 
it,  of  how  he  came  to  it,  and  how  it  has  changed  his 
thinkings  and  his  doings  in  religion. 

Now  I  foresee  thoughts,  a  whole  world  of  thoughts, 
that  will  flow  to  me  out  of  this  discovered  truth 
that  Jesus  the  Man  by  the  force  of  His  Manhood 
is  able  to  make  men  His  brethren  live ;  that  a  chnstoi- 
His  Manhood  makes  this  life  arise  in  them  Aowffrom 
by  operation  of  a  law  of  fact  no  different,  thiscon- 
except  for  the  scale  of  its  application,  from  theMan- 
that  law  of  nature  by  which  in  time  and  Lood' 
space  thought  and  action  can  transfer  themselves 
from  man  to  man.  A  whole  Christology  has  come  to 


218 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


our  hand  in  this  discovery,  to  be  unrolled  when  and 
how  we  can.  Yes,  a  whole  knowledge  of  the  Christ; 
no  new  patch  upon  the  old  garment  of  Christian  con¬ 
fession,  hut  a  vesture  woven  new  and  without  seam 
from  the  top  throughout. 

That  is  bold  language  in  such  as  I.  Bold  to  pre¬ 
sumption  if  it  meant  the  weaving  of  a  new  garment 
of  belief  for  any  but  my  sole  self.  That  is  not  pre¬ 
sumed  by  me:  how  should  it  be?  But  to  reclothe 
one’s  own  naked  soul  with  a  vesture  of  personal 
faith,  which  shall  be  seamless,  continuous,  whole, 
of  one  piece,  one  pattern  throughout,  that  is  the 
very  task  which  Christ’s  own  parable  has  set  to 
whoever  will  be  gospelled  by  Him.  That  task  I 
must  attempt;  I  am  no  Christian  else.  For  every 
Christian  must  make  his  own  Christology.  For 
this  cause  came  he  into  the  world,  however  humble 
an  incomer  he  be.  He  came  to  know  the  Christ; 
but  to  know  Christ  with  that  of  his  nature  which 
is  thinker,  this  is  to  Christologise. 

But  the  task  is  a  new  one.  It  is  not  the  quest  I 
set  out  on  when  these  pages  began,  saying  I  would 
go  on  search  for  an  answer  to  the  Christ’s  demand, 
Who  say  ye  that  I  am  ?  That  quest  can  have  indeed 
no  ending,  here  on  the  earth-plane  nor  yet,  as  I 
forecast,  beyond  earth’s  horizon.  The  Vision  fleets 
before  our  pursuit,  like  the  cloud-bow’s  foot  before 
the  child  in  chase  of  it.  The  nearer  the  quester 
comes,  the  further  off  him  hovers  again  the  Grail. 
The  search  has  no  ending,  but  a  stage  of  it  may 


THE  MAN  ATONING  MAN 


219 


end ;  and  such  a  goal  of  a  first  day’s  journey  I  have 
reached.  For  some  timid,  reverent  answer  I  have 
been  venturing  to  the  “Who  sayest  thou  that  I  am  ?” 

I  say  that  He  whom  our  creed  names 
Christ  and  Son  of  God  is  also  Jesus  who  was  mingup. 
once  a  Man,  and  now  and  for  ever  is  a  Man. 

I  am  saying  in  this  that  which  the  theologian  who 
interpreted  that  creed  more  fully  in  the  writing- 
known  as  the  Quicunque  has  said,  that  the  Christ 
is  God  and  Man.  But  I  am  saying  it  with  an 
explicitness  of  meaning  which  he  might  own  or 
disown,  but  which  my  brethren  have  not,  I  think, 
yet  recognised  as  their  own  explication  of  his 
formula.  For  I  cannot  content  myself  with  the 
language  of  the  Church’s  hitherto  philosophy  to 
which  the  Quicunque  gave  a  lead.  When  our 
philosophers  lay  down  that  the  Christ  is  the  union 
of  two  Natures  in  one  Person,  that  He  has  “taken 
the  Manhood  into  God,”  they  leave  me  not  alone 
untouched  in  heart  but  unsatisfied  in  mind.  They 
seem  to  me  not  to  have  found  the  truth,  but  only 
to  be  feeling  after  it,  if  haply  they  may  find  it. 
For  what  it  is  to  “take  the  Manhood  into  God,”  I 
do  not  at  all  conceive,  nor  am  I  sure  that  it  can 
be  conceived  by  any  one  else  as  mortal  as  myself. 
If  there  be  any  real  thing  which  is  named  by  the 
word  Manhood,  I  am  incapable  of  figuring  it,  and 
to  me  it  is  no  reality.  Men  I  can  see,  Manhood  I 
cannot.  There  is,  I  am  sure,  a  most  real  event  and 


220 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


a  real  fact  for  which  “taking  of  the  Manhood  into 
God”  is  at  present  a  name  we  use;  it  names  all  our 
hope  in  heaven  or  earth.  We  must  go  on  using  it 
till  we  can  find  or  frame  a  better;  but  it  is  needful 
to  remember  that  it  is  not  a  description  of  the 
divine-human  fact,  but  only  a  symbol  of  it.  I  am 
trying  to  decipher  the  symbol  in  such  part  of  it  as 
my  apprehension  can  attain.  The  whole  fact, 
that  assumption  of  the  humanity  into  the  divine, 
will  always  be  beyond  my  imagination’s  reach  so 
long  as  I  am  mortal  and  as  images  in  the  mind  can 
arise  only  from  mortal  things.  But  a  part  of  that 
whole  fact — call  it,  if  you  will,  an  infinitesmal  part 
of  the  infinite  fact — a  part  of  it  is  not  beyond  my 
reach,  for  mortal  things  do  render  me  an  image  of 
Nota  this.  A  Manhood  taken  into  God  may  be  a 

“Man-  .  . 

hood”  word  of  little  meaning  to  my  reason,  and  of 
God  but  a  less  mJ  spirit ;  hut  a  Man  taken  into 
“Man,”  God — this  is  not  a  word  to  me  but  a  thing; 

can  be  a  .  .  ,,  . 

knowledge  mJ  reason  can  arise  to  scan  this  thing,  my 
and  a  spirit  can  spring  to  be  embraced  by  it.  With- 

power  on  A  A  0  J 

the  soul,  in  that  vast  unfeatured  glory  which  breathes 
up  like  a  luminous  cloud  before  my  wistful  eyes  when 
they  tell  me  of  a  Manhood  now  with  God  and  made 
one  with  God,  within  that  glory  I  see  One  who  is 
glorious  standing  there,  and  the  form  of  Him  is  like 
a  son  of  man,  but  of  all  sons  of  men  it  is  like  Jesus 
only,  and  is  in  all  things  like  to  Him.  What  there  is 
else  of  Him  there,  what  the  real  Reality  is  which 
reaches  back  into  the  infinite  and  invisible  and  pre- 


THE  MAN  ATONING  MAN 


221 


sents  to  a  mortal’s  gaze,  as  Jehovah  once  to  Moses, 
one  facet,  as  it  were,  of  Divinity,  the  face  of  Christ 
Jesus  the  Man — what  the  whole  Christ  is  who  is  more 
than  J esus,  I  aspire,  but  cannot  attain,  to  know.  But 
this  face  of  Jesus  Christ,  these  lineaments  of  a  Man, 
this  I  do  attain  to  know.  This  of  the  Word  of 
Life  we  have  seen  with  our  eyes,  we  have  looked 
upon,  and  our  hands  have  handled  once  in  time 
through  our  brethren  who  knew  Him  in  the  flesh. 
This  I  have  determined  with  myself  to  know, 
because  it  is  knowable  of  such  as  I.  This  my  knowl¬ 
edge  I  hold  fast  and  will  not  let  it  go.  No  one 
shall  take  out  of  my  hand,  as  one  takes  from  a  child’s 
hand  something  which  concerns  him  not,  this 
instrument  of  truth,  my  vision  of  Jesus  of 
Nazareth,  a  Man  who  lived  and  died  and  lives  for 
evermore,  and  who  said  on  the  morrow  of  His  death 
to  them  that  knew  Him  on  its  yesterday,  “Behold 
that  it  is  I  myself.” 

I  hold  fast  then  the  Vision  of  the  Man  Jesus  seen 
in  the  heart  of  the  “excellent  glory”  of  the  Son  of 
God.  Yet  this  Vision,  if  it  is  allowed  me  by 
my  fellows  without  breach  of  holy  sym-  faith  in 
pathies,  can  it  suffice  us  as  a  faith  ?  Man  sum-6 

This  Human  One,  viewed  as  it  were  in  re-  cient  for 
lief  upon  the  field  of  a  Divine  Reality,  can 
He,  my  brethren  ask,  be  a  saviour  of  the  world ;  “Can 
He  by  Himself,  apart  from  the  ‘excellent  glory,’  re¬ 
deem  Israel  from  all  his  sins  ?  He  can  indeed  reveal 
to  us  the  Father  by  His  words  and  works  in  the  mor- 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


222 


tal  existence;  He  can  inform  and  stimulate  our 
carnal  natures  by  the  example  of  a  life  tempted  but 
temptation-proof;  He  can  by  some  mystic  action,  of 
which  the  Cross  and  Passion  was  the  instrument, 
achieve  our  pardon  for  the  sins  which  lay  to  our 
charge  and  so  make  a  new  beginning  of  right  living 
possible  for  us.  But  that  we  may  persevere  in  right 
living,  nay,  even  that  we  may  begin,  there  needs  that  a 
power  from  heaven  should  both  prevent  and  follow 
us.  The  Spirit  must  be  sent.  But  He  proceedeth 
from  the  Father  and  the  Son;  He  cannot  proceed 
from  the  Man  within  the  Son.  You  will  not  bid  us 
think  of  Jesus,  as  do  certain  who  hold  the  Unity  of 
the  Divine  Being  but  refuse  the  Trinity,  as  one 
among  earth’s  saints  though  the  very  King  of  saints, 
one  among  heroes  of  the  faith,  though  a  Hero  un¬ 
approached.  A  saint  may  by  his  holy  example  bet¬ 
ter  his  brother  man;  he  cannot  deliver  his  brother 
or  make  atonement  for  him:  a  hero  may  fire  his 
comrades  by  his  living  virtue,  or  when  dead  by  the 
memory  of  it;  he  cannot  champion  them  against  the 
mystic  enemy  of  their  soul.  How  then  can  the  Christ 
atone  and  save  us  as  He  is  only  Jesus  Christ  the 
Man  ?” 

But  I  have  answered  this  awhile  ago. 

It  is  if  the  ° 

Human  Jesus  the  slain  and  glorified,  finite  and  hu- 

infiniteS  man  once>  human  still  but  now  is  also 

infinite  in  His  humanity.  He  who  before 

the  world  began  was  the  Logos  or  Wisdom  is  now, 

even  in  His  Human  Person,  that  which  the  Wisdom 


THE  MAN  ATONING  MAN 


223 


of  God  is;  He  reacheth  from  the  one  end  nnto  the 
other,  strongly  and  also  sweetly  ordering  all  things 
human.  In  His  Manhood  He  is  present  to  all  men 
everywhere  and  in  all  times.  This  Presence  to  all  is 
that  union  of  a  self  with  a  self  by  the  interchange  of 
forces  of  their  being,  which  we  symbolise  by  the  word 
“Life.”  All  men  live  nnto  God,  said  Jesus  or  an 
evangelist  for  Him :  all  men  now  can  live  unto  J  esus, 
for  in  all  places  and  times  He  is  there  to  effect  with 
them  the  vital  intercourse,  and  whoso  will  apprehend 
that  by  which  also  He  is  apprehended,  can  be  through 
that  mutual  touch  born  into  life. 

Things  beyond  sense  can  be  thought  of  Theonly 
only  by  help  of  figures  drawn  from  things  of  ^rd  fol\ 
sense,  and  this  transcendent  energy  of  life  I  is  “Teiep- 
have  imaged  to  myself  by  the  highest  mode  athy' 
of  vital  interaction  which  man  has  discerned  and 
found  a  name  for.  It  is  doubtless  a  word  of  some¬ 
what  low  quality,  new  and  of  uncertain  status  in 
science  and  literature,  and  in  religion  of  no  position 
at  all ;  but  there  is  as  yet  no  other.  We  have  to  name 
this  as  we  can,  and  so  we  call  it  Telepathy,  Experi¬ 
ence  of  the  Ear.  The  word  is  not  only  unworthy  of 
the  high  matter  because  it  lacks  high  associations; 
it  is  also  inadequate  in  logic,  failing  to  touch  closely 
enough  the  fact,  which  is  not  described  truly  by  “Ex¬ 
perience  of  the  Ear.”  Earness  or  nearness  is  not  of 
the  essence.  It  is  not  the  distance  between  the 
two  factors  in  the  action,  telepathiser  and  telepa- 
thised,  that  gives  the  experience  its  character;  what 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


224 

constitutes  telepathy  is  the  interaction  of  the  factors 
across  a  void.  Whether  the  void  between  them  is 
measured  by  leagues  or  inches,  by  a  segment  of  the 
globe  or  the  interval  of  two  sitters  on  a  bench,  the 
passage  of  force  from  mind  to  mind  is  at  present 
an  equal  mystery,  though  the  one  occurrence  is  famil¬ 
iar  and  the  other  rare. 

Accepting  then  the  name  with  its  inadequacies, 
I  use  it  for  lack  of  an  apter  to  interpret  the  basal 
fact  in  man’s  spiritual  fate.  Man  has  his  life,  his 
life  unto  God  which  is  his  real  life,  by  submitting 
to  the  action  on  him  of  this  law  of  existence  which, 
in  its  highest  activity  on  the  mortal  plane  that  we 
are  able  to  verify,  we  have  called  telepathy.  By 
telepathy,  I  mean  the  same  fact  on  the  level  of 
human  existence  as  the  fact  we  name  “vitality”  on 
the  lowest  level  of  organic  existence.  The  souf 
lives  by  the  same  law  as  the  mollusc,  interchange 
with  a  world  which  environs  it.  The  mollusc  is  a 
germ  floating  in  a  liquid  world,  the  soul  is  a  germ 
in  the  creative  encompassment  of  the  final  Reality. 
What  makes  the  difference  between  the  lowest  and 
the  highest  creature  is  the  different  measure  in 
breadth  and  depth  and  height  of  the  environment 
with  which  the  creature  is  able  to  have  relations  of 
self-interchange.  Man  is  capable  of  a  relation  to 
the  Whole,  he  lives,  we  say,  unto  God.  It  is  the 
Christ  who  enables  this  relationship,  by  causing  him 
to  attempt  and  attain  a  union  of  his  being  with  the 
Being  of  God.  He  causes  this  by  telepathic  action 


THE  MAN  ATONING  MAN 


225 


of  His  human  personality.  Having  in  that  person¬ 
ality  during  the  mortal  period  attained  a  perfect  life 
unto  the  Father,  He  conveys  that  vital  con-  Christ 
dition  to  the  soul  of  a  man,  by  the  same  saves  us  by 

the  teie- 

functioning  of  His  nature  as  that  by  which  pathic 
thought  or  purpose  is  conveyed  from  one  ^atkmof 
man’s  mind  and  will  to  those  of  another,  life  unto 
There  is  in  this  case  not  a  bare  thought- 


transference  but  a  faith-transference ;  but  faith 
is  only  thought  and  will  exercised  upon  the 
supreme  interest  of  a  soul ;  the  nature  of  the 
thing  transferred  is  different,  the  mode  of  the 
transference  is  the  same.  Jesus  then  by  His  sacri¬ 
fice  of  self  in  the  temporal  career  lived  unto  God; 
by  the  perpetual  sacrifice  of  self  maintained  “in  heav¬ 
enly  places.”  He  lives  now  and  ever  unto  God ;  that 
activity  of  His  Being,  wherever  its  vibration  falls 
on  the  being  of  a  man  who  can  respond  to  it,  repeats 
itself  in  the  man;  the  man  offers  to  God  the  like 
sacrifice  of  self  in  his  thinkings  and  purposings  as 
Jesus  offered  and  offers  still.  In  making  it  he  has 
life.  His  sins  are  put  away,  his  separation  becomes 
union,  atonement  has  happened  to  him,  he  is  re¬ 
deemed.  It  is  the  Man  Jesus  Christ  who  has 
redeemed  him;  He  has  released  him  by  His  power 
as  Man. 


But  this  makes  all  things  new  for  him  who  believes 
it,  as  it  does  for  this  one  solitary  seeker  after  the 
truth  of  Christ.  I  cannot  patch  the  old  garment  of 


226 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


my  Christian  confession  with  this  new  truth.  Every 
thread  of  it  must  be  woven  again  on  the  pattern  set 
me  by  this  Vision  of  the  Glorified  Manhood, 
flub™*  which  not  I  have  overtaken  by  my  pursuit, 
here  dealt  but  which  has  overtaken  me  the  pursuer, 
the  terms  The  new  garment  is  for  the  covering  only 
of  its  con-  0£  m  gtugie  se]f  •  it  will  be  a  confession  of 

fession.  J  °  7 

faith  uttered  to  make  my  own  faith  better 
by  a  better  confessing  of  it,  not  to  alter  a  brother’s 
faith  or  even  his  confession. 

Yet  somewhere  even  this  may  happen  to  a  brother. 
Nay,  it  will. 

But  indeed  there  can  be  no  talk  of  altering  faith, 
however  it  be  with  confession.  Faith  is  my  com¬ 
munion  with  Christ  in  God,  my  life  unto  the  Eternal 
brought  to  me  by  His  Son,  my  Lord.  No  new  dis¬ 
covery  of  human  fact,  such  as  this  telepathy,  can 
affect  the  law  of  that  communion,  it  can  but  pre¬ 
scribe  some  revision  of  the  words  that  interpret  it 
between  a  man  and  his  fellow;  my  soul  can  ascend 
to  God  by  no  other  wing  of  flight  than  hitherto.  The 
divine  word  of  faith  is  re-written  never,  though  ever 
to  be  re-read  by  every  soul  in  its  turn. 

That  is  what  has  to  be  done  by  my  soul  hence¬ 
forward;  I  must  read  again  in  a  light  new-fallen 
on  them  the  words  of  eternal  life. 

A  quest  ends  for  me,  a  quest  begins.  And  what 
a  vast  of  country  it  will  call  on  me  to  range!  Not 
one  article  of  our  creed  but  I  must  halt  before  it 
and  ask  why  I,  who  believe  what  I  do  believe  of 


THE  MAN  ATONING  MAN  227 

the  Man  Christ  Jesus,  accept  this  word  of  ancient 
men,  which  tells  of  what  He  did  and  suffered  and 
now  does.  Not  a  practice  or  an  institution  of  the 
Church  but  I  must  examine  its  origin  and  find 
whether  that  origin  lies  in  the  Person  of  this  Jesus 
as  He  appeared  to  His  Church  after  His  Eesurrec- 
tion,  saying,  “It  is  I  Myself.”  That  is  not  a  quest 
to  be  entered  on  in  haste,  still  less  to  be  followed  up 
with  the  scant  remaining  energy  of  the  impulse  which 
has  brought  me  thus  far.  I  will  rein  in  and  rest, 
and  prepare  with  forethought  and  patience  the  long 
and,  it  may  be,  not  unperilous  adventure. 

‘H-  *  &  ■3fr  •X’ 


Ah,  no.  I  cannot  stop  just  where  I  stand.  The 
new  scope  will  seem  to  myself  unreal,  a  delusive 
mirage  not  a  prospect  of  a  promised  land,  unless 
from  the  height  I  have  been  led  to  I  cast  my  eye 
north  or  south,  east  or  west  over  the  land  which  I 
hope  is  given  me,  and  distinguish  yonder  or  yonder 
some  feature  of  the  new  great  landscape  and  the 
vista  up  which  I  must  presently  steer  my  course 
to  it,  with  this  secret  of  mine  and  its  method  for 
a  pilot.  Yes,  before  I  leave  this  vantage  let  me 
just  seize  one  prospect  or  another  of  the  land  whither 
I  trust  to  go  in  to  possess  it. 


CHAPTER  XIX 


/  A  SINGLE  BELIEVER’S  CREED 

“But,  John,”  said  my  mother  when  I  had  read  this 
last  section,  “before  you  go  on  to  that  look  up  the 
vistas  of  Church  questions  there  is  a  thing  I  much 
wish  you  would  do.  I  want  you  to  give  us  a  short 
summary  of  all  you  have  been  saying.  You  know, 
when  I  read  the  daily  papers  (now,  don’t  look 
offended!)  I  am  so  glad  of  their  plan  of  putting  all 
the  war-news  short  and  clear  in  a  quarter  column. 
Then  I  know  how  things  are  going,  and  I  do  not 
have  to  pick  it  out  for  myself  from  the  confusing 
telegrams.  Couldn’t  you  give  us  a  summary  like 
that,  to  bring  all  these  many  chapters  into  one 
little  picture  where  we  can  take  it  in  at  one  look? 
I  feel,  John,  I  have  been  understanding  you;  but 
I  expect  there  are  plenty  of  slow  thinkers  like 
myself  who  would  be  glad  if  you  did  this — when 
you  make  a  book  of  this.” 

I  reflected,  and  saw  she  was  right.  I  said,  “Your 
advice  is  most  good.  It  has  much  better  authority 
than  the  practice  of  the  Press — the  practice  of  the 
Church.  She  made  a  summary  of  her  teachings  in 
a  short  creed,  for  just  the  reason  you  name,  to  get 

228 


A  SINGLE  BELIEVER’S  CREED  229 


the  whole  Gospel  under  the  eye  in  one  picture.  Yes, 
that  is  what  I  must  do — try  to  bring  my  musings 
on  the  mystery  of  how  Christ  saves  the  world  into 
the  frame  of  a  brief  Confession  of  Faith — my  faith, 
my  own  personal  understanding  of  divine-human 
fact,  so  far  as  it  is  not  expressed  for  me  already  in 
the  language  of  the  common  creed  of  all  churchmen.” 

I  have  tried,  and  this  is  my  Confession. 

I  believe  with  mind  and  heart  and  soul  that  Jesus 
Christ  was  and  is  the  Life,  and  all  that  is  within  me 
shall  praise  that  holy  Name. 

And  I  believe,  with  my  frail  and  humble  under¬ 
standing,  that  He  became  the  life  of  men  in  this 
wise : — 

That  He  was  the  Saviour  of  the  world  by  making 
atonement  for  the  sins  of  men,  not  in  His  Passion 
and  death  only,  but  in  all  the  days  of  His  flesh. 

I  believe  that  He  wrought  this  atonement  first 
by  the  attainment  in  Himself  of  a  perfect  life  unto 
God  through  the  entire  surrender  of  His  being  to 
the  Father’s  will. 

That  this  surrender  was  consummated  by  the  death 
on  the  Cross. 

And  I  believe  that  in  the  Rising  on  the  third  day 
the  God  that  answereth  by  fire  took  part  in  the 
sacrifice  of  the  Christ,  and  made  it  to  be  the  Mutual 
Sacrifice  which  maketh  life. 


230 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


That  hereby  it  is  known  assuredly  that  to  lose  life 
for  Christ’s  sake  is  to  find  life,  as  He  found  it; 
and  this  is  the  “Power  of  the  Resurrection”  which 
brought  life  and  immortality  to  light. 

And  this  I  believe  to  be  the  Secret  of  the  World, 
of  that  which  now  is  and  that  which  is  to  come, 
so  far  as  man  can  read  it  yet. 

And  I  believe  that  having  attained  this  perfect 
life  unto  God,  He  communicated  it  to  men  through 
the  action  of  a  law  of  Mature  which  is  also  a  law  of 
Spirit — the  law  of  faith-transference ;  which  I 
would  rename  faith-conference,  because  in  this 
transfer  of  the  mind  of  one  to  other  both  giver  and 
receiver  must  act  by  a  self -giving  which  is  mutual 
of  the  two. 

I  believe  that  in  the  earthly  ministry  and  all  the 
time  on  earth  Jesus  of  Hazareth  conveyed  to  other 
men,  by  this  action  on  them  of  His  person,  the  life 
which  He  had  unto  the  Father.  Through  an  inter¬ 
change  between  His  soul  and  theirs  they  came  to 
have  “the  mind  which  was  also  in  Christ  Jesus,” 
and  they  lived  as  He  unto  God. 

But  to  give  life  to  the  spirit  of  a  man  is  to  make 
him  whole  in  spirit,  and  this  is  to  take  away  his  sin, 
for  sin  is  death. 

This  is,  in  my  frail  understanding,  the  truth  of 
the  Atonement — -as  Jesus  wrought  it  being  yet  in 
the  flesh. 


A  SINGLE  BELIEVER’S  CREED  231 


And  I  believe  that  He  who  rose  from  the  dead  on 
the  third  day  was  none  other  than  Jesus,  whom  men 
had  crucified  and  buried. 

I  believe  His  word,  “Behold  that  it  is  I  Myself,” 
and  that  it  was  the  same  Man,  Jesus  of  Nazareth 
who  had  walked  in  Galilee  and  been  slain  at 
J  erusalem. 

I  believe  that  this  Man  was  also  God  (by  what 
wonder  of  Being  I  know  not  nor  can  any  man; 
God  knoweth) ;  but  this  of  Godhead  in  Him  I  seem 
myself  to  know,  that  this  Man  had  through  death 
become  Infinite  both  to  know  and  to  do,  for  that 
to  all  men  everywhere  and  always  He  has  become 
a  power  to  give  them  the  life  unto  God  through  life 
unto  Himself. 

Eor  so  gave  He  life  after  His  Passion  to  Peter 
and  the  brethren  to  whom  He  showed  Himself, 
and  so  to  Paul  and  others  who  knew  Him  not  after 
the  flesh,  and  so  to  all  souls  in  all  time  since  who 
because  of  their  word  turned  to  Him. 

And  I  believe  He  gives  this  life  to  men  by  the 
same  law  natural  and  spiritual  as  when  He  taught 
in  Galilee  or  Jerusalem;  the  mind  that  was  and  is 
in  Christ  Jesus  towards  the  Father,  that  mind  can 
also  come  to  be  in  whoso  of  us  shall  give  his  thought 
and  will  to  receive  the  thought  and  will  of  Jesus 
who  gives  of  them  to  us. 

This  is  to  my  mortal  apprehension  the  truth  of 
the  Atonement  as  Jesus  works  it  now  by  the  glorified 
Manhood.  This  is  that  which  may  be  known  to  man 


232 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


of  the  eternal  Sacrifice  of  the  Lamb,  and  the  per¬ 
petual  Intercession.  In  His  Manhood  Jesus  eternally 
liveth  unto  God,  and  because  He  lives  we 
live  also. 

And  I  believe  in  the  Holy  Ghost,  whose  office 
on  earth  is  to  bring  men  into  the  bond  of  life  be¬ 
tween  J esus  and  their  souls. 

And  in  the  Holy  Catholic  Church,  which  is  Holy 
and  is  Catholic  according  to  the  measure  of  the 
life  unto  Christ  which  the  Spirit  works  in  its  mem¬ 
bers,  each  by  each  and  all  in  one. 

And  I  believe  that  the  pillar  and  ground  of  the 
Catholic  Church  is  the  life  unto  J  esus  Christ,  where¬ 
by  the  Church  has  communion  with  Him  and  in  Him 
with  her  members;  and  hereby  we  know  if  a  belief 
or  practice  he  Catholic  truth,  by  the  life  it  works 
in  Church  and  members. 


This  is  my  confession  of  the  faith  of  Christ  as 
my  weak  understanding  can  as  yet  attain  to  frame 
it.  Wherein  may  my  brethren’s  faith  amend  or 
else  confirm  my  own;  and  may  the  Holy  Spirit  of 
counsel  and  of  strength  send  to  them  and  me  the 
light  in  which  we  shall  see  light,  out  of  the  well  of 
life  which  is  with  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord. 


BOOK  TWO 

THE  FORECAST  OF  A  THEOLOGY 


CHAPTER  XX 


THE  PEIEST 


Feom  the  retrospect  back  again  to  the  prospect. 

“By  their  fruits  shall  ye  know  them”  was-  said 
of  prophets.  It  is  true  and  even  truer  of  their 
prophecy,  and  only  less  effectively  true  of  that  which 
is  not  but  only  may  come  to  be  a  prophecy,  salvation 
a  man’s  thought  before  he  forthtells  it.  My  by  life— ia 
thought  shall  not  be  told  forth  beyond  my  or  in 
own  door  until  I  foresee  some  fruit  of  it.  p<nver? 
That  is  what  I  must  try  to  do  at  this  ending  and  be¬ 
ginning  of  a  quest  and  a  quest.  This  truth  which  I 
have  found — that  the  Christ  made  and  now  makes 
men  to  live  by  His  human  person  exercising  a  human 
faculty — has  it  the  promise  of  light  and  power  for 
man  in  that  struggle  for  existence  by  which  he  must 
strive  to  enter  into  life  ?  Will  it  bring  counsel  to  the 
knower  and  ghostly  strength  to  the  doer  of  truth  ? 

The  principle  must  either  claim  nothing  or  claim 
to  guide  into  all  truth.  The  garment  of  faith  can¬ 
not  be  patched,  I  was  saying,  but  woven  throughout. 
Xothing  that  the  men  of  the  faith  have  thought 
and  declared,  instituted  or  practised,  may  be  fenced 
off  against  its  search,  nothing  whatever.  Does  it 

235 


236 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


define  some  conception  of  the  relations  of  man  to 
God,  in  a  sense  which  does  not  agree  with  the  lan¬ 
guage  of  a  creed;  it  must  not  retire  like  a  tres¬ 
passer  before  the  heritor  with  an  apology  for  the 
intrusion.  It  must  stand  its  ground,  abide  the 
question  of  the  article  of  faith  which  is  in  posses¬ 
sion  and  submit  its  own  question.  Beati  possir 
dentes  is  a  sound  maxim  in  theology  as  in  politics; 
but  regnurn  caelorum  patitur  vim  et  violenti  rapiunt 
illud  is  also  sound  and  of  far  higher  authority,  and 
the  new  thought  must  press  into  the  kingdom  if  it 
can.  By  pacific  penetration  first.  But  if  new 
principle  and  old  tradition  cannot  find  themselves 
one  in  the  other,  there  must  be  re-examination  of 
both,  and  if  the  disharmony  of  old  and  new  cannot 
be  reconciled  after  closer  scrutiny,  there  must  come 
decision  which  of  the  two  should  yield,  the  Church 
or  her  member;  then,  if  the  Church  will  not  and 
Churchman  may  not,  must  come  the  ordeal  of  con¬ 
tention.  The  truth  does  often  send  a  sword  on  earth. 
More  often  than  not  the  one  or  the  other  unsheathes 
it  before  there  is  need ;  but  often  enough 
the  need  does  arrive  at  last.  To  know  how 
to  wait  for  it,  this  is  right  soldiership  in  the  war 
of  faith. 

But  what  a  commonplace!  Surely  I  am  wasting 
words. 

Am  I  ?  Or  am  I  signalling  a  hope  that 

* 

If  knowledge  bring  the  sword, 
Knowledge  will  take  the  sword  away, 


THE  PRIEST 


237 


and  that  this  principle  of  salvation  by  life  is  a 
knowledge  that  will  make  a  peace,  peace  between 
old  and  new?  I  do  hope  it,  and  the  hope  is  firm 
in  me.  The  prospects  of  the  promised  land  which 
I  am  going  to  attempt  will  be  the  seal  or  else  the 
cancel  of  my  hope. 

Up  what  vista  shall  my  first  outlook  be  ? 

But  I  am  priest ;  the  first  scope  should  be 

r  7  r  Will  it 

my  priestly  duty.  How  does  that  landscape  interpret 

display  its  features  under  the  light  of  the 

new  principle  ? 

Of  this  and  of  any  other  tract  of  the  kingdom 
that  invites  our  occupation  the  prospect  to  be  at¬ 
tempted  here  must  be  not  a  survey  but  a  glimpse. 
One  must  only  seize  it,  and  then  look  elsewhere  for 
another  glimpse  up  some  other  vista. 

“As  My  Father  hath  sent  Me  even  so  send  I  you.” 
How  then  did  the  Father  send  His  Christ?  For 
that  mission  is  the  direction  of  ours.  What  was  its 
method  ? 

The  method  of  faith-transference.  J esus  of 
Hazareth  lived  the  life  unto  God,  and  the  acts  of 
mind  and  will  of  which  that  life  was  made  repeated 
themselves  in  the  mind  and  will  of  disciples  in  whom 
the  vibration  of  His  energy  met  with  response. 
Jesus  the  Risen  Master  sends  forth  from  His  human 
Personality  the  same  virtue  upon  new  disciples; 
the  same  in  the  mode  of  operation  as  in  the  days 
of  His  finitude,  but  now  in  the  measure  of  its  infinite ; 


238 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


tlie  transference  of  faith  is  ubique ,  semper ,  in  omnes, 
because  the  Humanity  has  become  the  Glorified. 

If  the  disciple  is  to  be  as  his  Master,  the  pastor 
must  evangelise  by  the  method  of  the  shepherds’ 
Shepherd.  He  must  so  live  the  life  unto  God,  that 
the  vibrations  of  that  energy  in  him  may  reach  the 
flock,  and  when  a  son  of  peace  is  there  the  spark 
of  life  be  struck  on  a  new  heart.  His  cure 
of  souls  is  the  cure  of  his  own  soul.  The  physician 
must  heal  himself,  for  that  is  his  ministry  of  health 
to  others. 

This  is  no  doubt  a  mere  truism  in  pastoral  science. 
Everybody  knew  that  the  unworthy  priest,  though 
his  unworthiness  does  not  annul  the  sacrament  he 
ministers,  is  a  spoilt  evangelist.  Yet  did  everybody 
know  why  ?  His  example,  we  said,  seduces,  his  evil 
manners  corrupt  the  good  communications  of  his 
preachings.  But  did  we  all  know  why  the  bad 
heart  made  the  public  ministry  become  a  barrenness 
or  even  a  mischief  ? 

For  me  that  truism  has  blossomed  from  the  dry 
tree  into  the  green.  A  vision  has  come  of  the 
radiation  from  the  hidden  man  of  the  heart.  It 
is  the  Lucretian  vision,  video  per  inane  geri  res , 
movement  of  matter  in  a  void,  this  vision  discovered 
in  the  universe  of  spirit.  We  have  caught  sight  of 
forces  of  evil  and  of  good  which  can  cross  a  vibrant 
spiritual  ether  solid  and  continuous  as  the  material 
ether,  and  strike  upon  hearts  resilient  to  the  stroke  a 
health  or  else  a  pestilence. 


THE  PRIEST 


239 


That  vision  leaves  the  pastor  with  all  the  The 
old  duties  and  the  old  ways  of  discharging 
them,  but  also  all  things  are  become  new.  transfer- 
He  has  been  thinking  it  was  time  that  this  ence’ 
should  happen  to  him.  For  twenty,  thirty,  forty 
years  he  has  been  telling  his  people  to  come  to  church, 
and  they  have  not  come.  He  has  preached  for  that 
time  to  the  few  who  came,  but  he  is  not  sure  that  they 
are  wiser  or  better  for  it.  He  has  taught  the  children 
diligently,  and  what  do  they  know  of  their  Church’s 
religion,  when  they  leave  school  for  trade  or  service  ? 
He  has  faithfully  gone  his  round  of  their  doors, 
and  only  now  and  then  has  he  been  sure  that  any¬ 
thing  religious  happened  on  his  visit.  Then  on  one 
of  those  soulless  afternoons  which  are  no  strangers 
to  him,  when  he  has  crawled  about  the  parish  from 
samely  door  to  door,  and  feels  meagre,  blank, 
and  aware  of  his  leanness,  and  tells  himself  that 
one  has  got  to  do  this  thing  and  must  go  on  doing 
it  till  the  incumbency  shall  be  incumbent  on  himself 
no  longer,  but  one  does  not  see  much  use  in  it  and 
is  more  than  half  ashamed  of  the  futile  ceremony, 
— why  even  then  there  pushes  up  in  the  soil 
of  the  heart,  like  a  tender  root  in  a  dry  ground, 
the  all-blessed  thought  that  Jesus  of  Hazareth  may 
have  had  afternoons  like  this  of  his.  Afternoons 
when  He  marvelled  because  of  their  unbelief,  when 
He  sighed  within  Him,  “Ephphatha,”  and  yet  noth¬ 
ing  did  open,  or  had  to  say  aloud,  “O  faithless  genera¬ 
tion,  how  long  shall  I  suffer  you  ?”  afternoons  when 


240 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


the  Spirit  of  the  Lord  was  not  present  to  heal,  but 
round  Him  were  they  that  had  eyes  and  saw  not, 
ears  and  they  did  not  hear.  And  yet  of  the  three 
thousand  who  at  Pentecost  became  His  own  were 
there  not  hundreds  or  even  tens  of  hundreds  who 
would  not  have  found  this  salvation  if  something 
had  not  earlier  found  themselves  ?  But  something 
had  found  them  earlier.  These  were  men  who  had 
hung  on  the  skirts  of  the  crowd  that  clustered 
round  the  new  Rabbi,  and  had  gone  away  home  un¬ 
gathered  into  the  flock,  yet  had  gone  home  with 
an  arrow  of  grace  fast  lodged  in  the  heart.  It  was 
an  arrow  shot  at  a  venture  from  the  Teacher’s  heart, 
soothly  an  arrow  of  the  Lord’s  deliverance,  though 
the  mark  it  found  was  not  foe  but  friend;  for 
it  was  the  stroke  of  the  life  which  was  in  the  Person 
of  the  Christ.  That  stroke  had  fallen  on  the  per¬ 
son  of  his  human  brother,  it  had  fastened  itself 
in  an  unconscious,  seemingly  unpregnant  soul, 
but  there  the  arrow  lodged.  Then  at  a  new  visit¬ 
ing  of  the  Power  from  on  high,  the  Giver  of 
Life,  a  response  awakes,  and  the  soul  quickens 
round  the  prick  where  the  Spirit  of  the  Man  Christ 
Jesus  had  touched  the  spirit  of  him  who  shall  be  a 
man  of  Christ. 

It  is  enough  for  the  disciple  to  be  as  his  Master; 
enough,  but  is  it  too  much?  Shall  he  not  be  as 
his  Master  was,  a  quickener  of  life  in  his  brethren 
he  knoweth  not  how  or  how  soon  ? 

Ho  we  remember  the  Psalmist,  who  warns  the 


THE  PRIEST 


241 


builder  and  the  watchman  of  the  City  Spiritual  that 
his  labour  is  lost  and  his  waking  is  in  vain  save  for 
One  who  giveth  His  beloved  in  their  sleep?  “in 
Shepherd,  your  flock  are  in  their  sleep,  but  sleePms.” 
the  shepherds’  Shepherd  can  give  them  nourishment 
even  in  this  sleep  of  their  unconsciousness,  their  un¬ 
concern,  which  blinds  them  to  your  signalling  and 
muffles  your  appeal.  That  is  what  you  have  to  be¬ 
lieve.  He  gives  to  this  slumbering  people  though 
they  give  no  sign ;  He  gives  a  grace  which 
flows  to  them  in  a  virtue  going  out  from  their 
mortal  shepherd’s  soul,  they  know  not  how  nor 
does  he  know,  but  it  flows.  More  untraceable 
than  the  creeping  of  the  night  dew  upon  the  meadow 
there  steals  along  the  garden  of  souls,  to  quicken 
and  nourish  the  tender  plants  of  Gods  planting, 
this  dew  of  a  divine  blessing  breathed  from  one 
faithful  brother’s  heart.  So  was  the  life  wrought 
in  others  at  the  first  by  Jesus  of  Nazareth;  so  was 
it  after  wrought,  so  is  it  still  being  wrought  by 
Jesus  the  Risen  Master;  and  even  so  is  life  wrought 
in  simple  folk  of  street  or  hamlet,  wherever  their 
human  pastor  lives  openly  or  in  secret  a  life  that  is 
a  life  unto  Christ. 

This  prospect  into  the  landscape  of  the  ministry 
was  to  be  not  a  survey  but  a  glimpse.  But  I  am 
bold  to  believe  that  in  this  one  throw  of  the  eye 
we  have  traversed  the  whole  field,  and  no  carefullest 
student  of  the  priest  and  pastor’s  duty  will  hereafter 


242 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


show  us  one  detail  of  the  task  for  which  our  vision 
of  the  pastoral  secret  cannot  render  us  the  inspiration 
and  the  rule. 

All  things  of  his  work  will  be  the  same;  also  all 
things  are  become  new.  He  will  go  on  telling  his 
people  to  come  to  church,  and  they  perhaps  will  go 
on  staying  away.  But  he  himself  has  known  better 
than  at  first  the  reason  why  one  should  go  to  church : 
it  is  that  a  well  of  life  is  there,  and  a  worshipper 
drinks  and  lives.  He  tells  them  of  this,  and  now 
some  of  them  think  they  are  being  told  what  is  true, 
for  they  discover  that  their  teacher  thinks  it  true 
himself. 

He  bids  them  in  this  evil  day  of  a  war  against 
and  for  the  Cross  to  come  with  him  to  the  sanctuary 
and  pray  for  Church  and  country,  for  soldier  and 
sailor  and  statesman.  But  now  he  can  show  them 
good  reason  why  men  should  pray  for  others.  It  is 
not  only  that  God  will  answer  the  prayer  of  faith. 
Prayer  can  answer  itself.  For  if  thought  and  will 
of  one  man  can  convey  themselves  to  another  man 
far  away,  then  may  a  prayer  of  faith  uttered  under 
a  church  roof  in  England  make  faith  spring  in  Eng¬ 
lish  breasts  along  a  shell-battered  trench  in  France, 
till  eyes  that  were  seeing  nought  but  a  hell  begin 
also  to  see  some  glimmer  of  a  heaven.  Is  it 
not  this  that  happened  to  the  soldier  lad  here 
in  hospital,  who  reports  that  it  did  them  good  when 
his  officer  came  aloUg  at  noon  and  said,  “Cheer  up, 


THE  PRIEST 


243 

men;  it’s  all  right,  they  are  praying  for  us  now  in 
England”  ? 

He  preaches  in  his  church  to  those  who  come. 
They  are  only  a  little  less  few,  but  these  he  is  sure 
are  wiser  and  better,  for  he  is  somehow  aware  that 
a  mutual  inspiration  breathes  between  them  and  him. 
He  teaches  his  boys  and  girls  in  school,  and  he  dares 
not  promise  himself  how  much  of  his  doctrine  will 
be  written  in  an  unfading  script  upon  their  minds; 
but  he  is  not  afraid  to  believe  that  sometimes  some¬ 
thing  quickens  between  the  child  heart  and  the  man’s, 
and  that  seed  is  the  word  of  God.  He  celebrates  the 
holiest  Mystery  with  the  words  and  the  acts  in  which 
there  may  not,  cannot  be,  any  change,  or  any  note  of 
difference  between  one  celebrant  and  another;  and 
yet — yet  there  is  a  difference  to  the  flock  who  com¬ 
mune  with  him.  In  holy  symbol  and  holy  utterance 
there  pulses  for  himself  the  stress  of  a  live  energy, 
ineffable  but  sure :  it  is  life  that  beats  from  the  liv¬ 
ing  Christ  to  him.  O  priest,  how  can  it  that,  and 
not  also  beat  by  the  selfsame  rhythm  from  thee  to  this 
people  and  from  them  to  thee  ? 


CHAPTER  XXI 

THE  CHURCH 

Priest  and  Church  are  correlated  terms.  The  prin¬ 
ciple  which  has  promised  me  light  on  the  meaning 
of  priesthood  should  cast  a  beam,  where  illumina¬ 
tion  is  needed  even  more,  upon  the  meaning  of 
Church. 

What  is  the  Church  % 

The  instinct  of  Christians  has  recognised  her 
nature  and  office  by  three  metaphors,  “ Jerusalem 
from  above  that  is  mother  of  us  all,”  “the  Church 
which  is  the  Bride  of  Christ,  the  Lamb’s  wife,”  and 
“the  Church  which  is  His  Body.”  I  will  pursue  these 
images,  consecrated  guides,  and  see  where  they 
lead  us. 

To  speak  first  of  the  Bride,  for  bridal  is  prior 
to  motherhood,  which  is  its  consequence  and  fulfil¬ 
ment.  How  then  is  the  Church  the  Bride  of  Christ 
the  Lamb  ? 

Church  Bridal  is  the  union  of  two  selves  that  are 
the  Bride.  a^  once  ]^e  an(j  diverse,  and  by  union  brings 

into  being  more  life.  This  more  of  life  is  primarily 
an  enhancement  of  life  in  the  one  and  the  other 

244 


THE  CHURCH 


245 


nature,  by  the  mutual  giving  of  the  two  selves;  this 
mutual  enhancement  is  all  the  life  that  bridal  per  se 
achieves. 

The  Church  then  is  Bride  to  Christ  in  a  most 
exact  significance  of  the  figure.  She  is  that  much 
of  humanity  which  has  with  the  Divine  both  affinity 
and  disparity ;  she  is  mortal  yet  akin  to  the  immortal, 
temporal  but  receptive  of  eternity.  She  is  capable 
of  union  with  Christ,  and  that  union  is  effected  by 
her  act  of  self-surrender  to  Him  met  by  Christ’s 
gift  who  gave  Himself  to  her.  Out  of  that  recipro¬ 
cation  of  faith  and  grace  flows  life  to  the  Church. 
And  be  it  reverently  and  heedfully  said,  there  flows 
life  to  the  Christ,  in  that  meaning  with  which  we 
would  say  that  Christ  the  Creator  lives  the  more 
through  every  creature  which  He  makes  live  unto 
Him. 

This  is  the  marriage  of  the  Lamb  and  the  Church ; 
it  is  a  communion  which  makes  life  for  the  Bride 
and  the  Bride’s  Lord. 

But  now  when  this  is  seen,  it  is  only  an  abstrac¬ 
tion  that  we  have  looked  at.  The  Church  when 
we  have  envisaged  her  as  that  much  of  humanity 
which  has  with  the  Divine  both  affinity  and  dis¬ 
parity  is  not  yet  a  visible  picture  to  the  mind.  And 
the  Marriage  of  the  Lamb  is  a  figure  of  speech, 
expressing  a  spiritual  fact  in  the  material  sphere, 
the  wedding  of  two  like  and  unlike  beings,  which 
does  not  bring  us  so  close  to  the  meaning  of  the  rela¬ 
tion  between  Christ  and  Christians  as  we  need  to 


246 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


come,  and  as  we  are  able  to  come  by  another  simili- 
a  truer  tude  of  higher  and  the  highest  authority, 
figure.  Jesus  Himself  gave  us  a  better  figure  than 
His  disciple  John.  a Where  two  or  three  are  gathered 
together  in  My  name,  there  am  I  in  the  midst  of 
them.”  The  Unio  Mystica  is  likened  to  a  group 
of  three  to  whom  another  joins  his  presence.  A  fig¬ 
ure  still,  but  a  likeness  more  near  to  the  reality  of 
a  union  of  Christ  and  the  Church. 

The  union  of  two  or  three  disciples  unto  Jesus 
differs  from  the  union  of  one  (the  Bride  that  is  the 
Church)  with  Christ  because  it  is  not  simple  but 
multiple.  It  is  a  complex,  mutually  penetrative 
union.  The  three  are  “gathered  together,”  and 
“agree”  in  a  petition;  each  joins  his  assent  to  that 
of  the  others  and  also  to  Jesus;  and  the  two  actions 
of  assent  are  involved  one  in  the  other,  each  disciple 
agrees  with  his  brothers  to  agree  with  the  Divine 
One.  And  his  union  with  the  Divine,  as  we  may 
add  to  the  saying,  unites  him  more  to  his  human 
fellows :  the  two  or  three  are  the  nearer  one  to  other, 
because  they  are  near  to  the  Christ. 

But  there  is  a  deeper  efficacy  yet  in  this  imaging 
of  the  presence  of  Christ  “in  the  midst”  of  a  group. 

For  what  is  this  presence?  Hot  a  bodily  con- 

The  Pres-  exceP^  in  the  corporeal  figure  of  a 

enceof  “gathering  together.”  They  “agree”  to- 

disclpfes  ge^er?  and  thereupon  J esus  is  there  in  agree¬ 
ment  with  them.  There  is  the  assent  in  a 
group  of  minds  of  one  with  others  and  all  with  J  esus. 


THE  CHURCH 


247 

A  thought  and  purpose  in  each  bosom  becomes  a 
thought  and  purpose  of  the  whole  three  and  of  their 
Master;  the  presence  of  this  Master  is  a  oneness  of 
minds  and  wills,  not  of  bodies. 

The  presence  of  Jesus  then  among  the  three  is 
the  union  of  His  mind  and  will  with  theirs.  How 
are  these  united  ?  We  are  giving  the  account  of  it 
that  there  is  a  telepathic  intercourse  between  Jesus 
and  the  disciples.  Is  there  any  other  account 
which  can  bear  to  be  put  beside  it  and  compared  to 
it  in  visibility  and  convincingness?  The  presence 
of  the  Christ  is  constituted  by  a  transference  of  the 
Christ-mind  to  the  several  and  collective  con¬ 
sciousness  of  the  three ;  Christ  is  there  with  the  men, 
because  they  think  and  purpose  the  things 
which  are  thoughts  in  His  mind  and  purposes  in 
His  will.  We  have  stated  the  union  of  Christ  and 
the  Church  no  longer  now  in  terms  of  metaphor 
but  of  fact ;  between  the  two  things  compared 
there  is  not  similarity  but  identity;  the  Unio 
Mystica  is  not  like  to  telepathy,  it  is  telepathy; 
it  is  a  manifestation  of  that  law  of  things  human  on 
the  level  where  human  is  becoming  divine. 

Will  any  one  still  grudge  me  the  word  telepathy, 
as  if  it  were  too  low,  of  too  equivocal  associations 
for  use  when  we  are  reasoning  in  excelsis ?  Hot  if 
they  will  remember  that  the  word  is  for  me  the 
name,  not  a  happy  name,  but  the  only  one,  of  what 
is  highest  in  religion  because  deepest  in  creation. 
Telepathy  is  the  law  of  life’s  operation,  where  the 


248 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


living  creature  is  man  the  spirit;  it  is  the  specific 
self-interchange,  the  communion,  the  mutual  sacri¬ 
fice,  of  soul  and  soul,  and  of  soul  and  Him  who 
made  it. 


Church 

the 

Mother. 


If  this  is  the  Bridal  of  the  Church,  what 
is  the  Motherhood?  How  does  that  Jeru¬ 
salem  which  is  above  and  is  free  gender 


children  unto  the  freedom  of  the  Spirit  ? 

This  is  to  ask  what  it  is  to  be  born,  what  the  nature 
is  of  birth,  and  what  is  the  part  in  birth  of  parent¬ 
hood. 

To  be  born  is  to  begin  to  live;  birth  is  the  first 
moment  of  the  self-interchange  of  organism  and  en¬ 
vironment.  Parenthood  is  the  action  which  occa¬ 
sions  the  beginning  of  this  self-interchange,  that 
is,  which  places  a  germ  of  organic  existence  in 
contact  with  an  environment  with  which  it  can 
effect  an  intercourse  and  so  be  quickened.  This  in¬ 
troduction  of  the  germ  into  an  environment  is  the 
parent-  essential  fact  of  parenthood,  whatever  be 
hood.  the  specific  mode  of  the  generation;  from 
most  elementary  to  the  most  complex,  be  it  fusion  or 
propagation,  or  sexual  reproduction  in  all  its  degrees 
of  articulateness.  The  parental  element  in  plant  or 
higher  creature  can  do  no  more  than  this, — place  a 
germ-cell  where  it  can  quicken  by  union  with  that 
which  is  other  than  itself.  There  the  germ  must 
bring  itself  to  birth  by  making  interchange  of  its  own 
substance  and  force  with  the  substances  and  forces 


THE  CHURCH 


249 


of  the  world  it  touches;  which  is  a  more  precise 
way  of  stating  what  has  hitherto  been  called  “the 
response  of  organism  to  environment.” 

How  the  germ  comes  to  be  at  all  is  the  mystery 
of  the  creation  of  life.  Some  scientists  hope  to 
penetrate  the  mystery  by  producing  artificially, 
say  by  chemistry  and  electricity,  living  matter 
such  as  we  have  in  protoplasm;  and  some  religious 
people  are  afraid  for  their  faith  if  these  hardy  ex¬ 
plorers  should  succeed  in  this.  They  need  not  be. 
We  shall  then  have  found  that  living  matter  did 
not  come  straight  from  the  Creator’s  hand  already 
alive,  but  mediately  through  chemic  and  electric 
forces.  But  whence  then  came  these?  Our  mind 
will  have  travelled  up  the  stream  of  creative  agency 
from  one  reach  to  a  higher  reach;  we  shall  be  so 
much  nearer  the  fountain-head.  And  shall  we  not 
be  glad  of  this,  glad  “to  see  the  nearer  God”  ? 

Nearer.  But  how  little  nearer!  What  promise 
or  what  fear  that  the  gulf  beyond  will  ever  be  passed  ? 
We  have  contemplated  the  fact  of  birth  and  parent¬ 
hood,  for  the  sake  of  a  desired  abstractness  of 
treatment,  under  the  type  of  plant-existence.  But 
the  law  of  parenthood  is  the  same  in  the  spiritual 
birth  where  Church  is  the  mother  of  children. 
Jerusalem  that  genders  unto  liberty  is  mother  of 
all  Christians  in  the  same  measure  and  mode  as 
that  in  which  the  natural  society  of  man  raises  up 
the  seed  of  a  new  generation.  By  the  ministry  of 
individual  members  whom  we  call  parents,  or  the 


£50 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


family,  the  human  race  continues  itself ;  parenthood 
does  not  cause  but  only  occasions  a  new  birth, 
brings  it  about  that  a  germ  which  is  the  living  soul 
of  a  man  is  placed  in  a  certain  environment  of  time 
and  space,  which  we  call  the  natural  existence  or 
the  world  of  flesh;  there  the  man  must  “do  for  his 
own  soul  the  rest,”  must  put  forth  an  energy  of  his 
own  and  quicken  himself  by  union  with  his  world. 
The  birth  of  man  Christian  is  on  no  other  wise. 

Let  us  look  at  this  in  the  concrete.  One  of  our¬ 
selves — how  was  he  born  in  the  spirit  ? 

The  birth  The  familiar  saying  that  the  child  draws 
of  a  in  religion  with  the  mother’s  milk  is  a  bold, 
Christian.  exaggerative?  pu£  not  untruthful  figure ;  that 

physical  commune  is  a  just  type  of  the  spiritual. 
The  babe  is  nourished  by  its  intercourse  with  the 
mother’s  vitality,  which  is  her  own  intercourse  with 
physical  nature.  Perfectly  analogous  is  the  good 
mother’s  impartment  of  her  religion  to  her  child. 
One  remembers  how  well !  One  morning  she  arrests 
his  mind  with  the  tale  of  a  Father  who  is  here  and 
sees  him  but  cannot  be  seen,  or  of  a  Jesus,  kind  to 
the  little  ones,  whom  this  little  one  must  try  to 
please.  What  makes  him  try  ?  His  reason  which 
is  convinced  of  the  fact?  But  at  this  age  one  does 
not  need  to  convince  a  child’s  reason  that  a  fact 
is  so,  one  needs  only  to  tell  him  it  is  so;  your  con¬ 
sciousness  of  the  world  is  his  consciousness  as  soon 
as  he  feels  vours.  That  is  what  he  has  done,  he 
has  felt  your  consciousness.  You,  the  mother,  had 


THE  CHURCH 


251 


the  consciousness  in  yourself  of  a  Father  present 
and  unseen,  of  a  Jesus,  kind  to  the  little  one  and 
to  his  mother.  That  consciousness  was  both  an  in¬ 
telligence  of  the  unseen  fact  and  a  purpose  to  real¬ 
ise  it  in  your  action ;  the  intelligence  mirrored 
itself  on  the  child’s  mind,  the  purpose  reverberated 
on  his  will;  he  had  a  vision  of  the  Father,  your 
vision,  and  a  readiness  like  your  own  to  be  a  child  of 
His.  Your  faith  transferred  itself  to  this  creature 
of  the  Father;  by  a  telepathy  you  brought  this  mor¬ 
tal  into  touch  with  the  Eternal;  the  child  must 
“do  for  his  own  soul  the  rest,”  but  if  he  shall  do  it, 
if  he  shall  attempt  the  response  to  the  new  world  to 
whose  border  you  have  drawn  him,  he  will  be  born 
alive  unto  God  and  His  Christ. 

Do  I  strain  the  idea  in  giving  to  this  the  name 
of  a  telepathy,  because  there  is  no  distance  in  the 
case,  for  he  sits  on  the  floor  with  the  small  head 
leaned  against  your  knee?  In  telepathy  there  is 
no  far  nor  near  as  we  men  measure  distances,  there 
is  only  a  Here  and  There,  and  a  gap  between  them 
with  no  bridge  that  we  can  discern.  And  how 
unbridged  for  our  present  intelligence  is  the  interval 
of  “I  and  Thou,”  when  these  are  beings  that  have 
life,  yet  more  when  they  are  persons  that  have  souls. 
That  interval  has  been  crossed  by  that  movement 
in  your  spirit  which  becomes  a  movement  in  his. 
How  was  this  done?  You  think  you  understand 
how,  because  your  voice  reached  his  ear  across  a 
foot  or  two  of  space.  But  this  was  the  crossing  of 


252 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


a  physical  gap  by  a  physical  force ;  the  air  of  nature 
carried  the  vibration  of  your  speech.  What  was 
the  “finer  air  in  air/’  which  carried  the  vibration 
of  your  faith?  Such  an  air  or  such  an  ether  there 
is,  I  do  not  doubt:  there  must  be  a  continuity  of 
substance  in  the  spiritual  universe  as  in  the  physical ; 
but  of  what  stuff  is  this  continuous  ether  made? 
What  is  the  force  that  spins  its  fibres  and  makes 
them  transmissive  of  the  beat  of  your  souls  pulse? 
May  be  we  shall  discover  this;  but  till  we  do  so, 
Telepathy,  Experience  of  the  Distant,  is  the  best 
name  we  have  for  this  fact  in  religion,  that  when  a 
faith  stirs  in  one  bosom  then  a  faith  can  be  made 
to  stir  in  another,  though  they  are  as  wide  apart 
as  is  that  which  says  “I  am  I”  from  that  to  which  it 
says  “Thou  art  Thou.” 

Review  this  action  between  mother  and  child. 
She  has  mothered  his  spirit  in  this  sense,  that  an 
act  of  thought  and  will  in  her  has  placed  the  child’s 
soul  in  contact  with  the  deeper  environment,  the 
world  spiritual,  so  that  it  is  in  his  power  now  to 
attempt  response  to  it.  That  is  the  extent  and  the 
limit  of  her  function  as  his  parent  in  Christ;  she 
has  introduced  the  germ  of  a  Christian  soul  into 
the  bounds  of  the  divine  kingdom  of  being.  She  can 
do  no  more,  he  must  live  there  as  a  member  by  his 
own  energy,  united  to  the  divine  energy,  by  appre¬ 
hending  that  by  which  also  he  is  apprehended. 

Is  this  spiritual  parenthood  any  way  different  in 
principle  from  the  natural,  and  is  not  the  Church 


THE  CHURCH 


253 


as  really  the  parent  of  the  child’s  soul  as  the  natural 
human  society  is  the  parent  of  his  body  and  mind  ? 
Then  I  have  seen  how  the  Church  is  Mother  of 
children*  It  is  by  a  birth  into  life  that  happens  at 
any  hearthside  on  any  day, 

When  one  that  loves  but  knows  not  reaps 
A  truth  from  one  that  loves  and  knows, 

if  only  he  reaps  from  his  teacher,  with  the  truth, 
also  the  teacher’s  passion  for  the  truth. 

This  is  normal  conversion  to  Christianity,  but  I 
know  some  good  Christian  people  who  will  quite 
refuse  it  that  name  “conversion.”  For  them  I  will 
try  another  example. 

“St.  Francis  said  (to  Brother  Ruffino),  Birthbya 
T  command  thee  by  thy  holy  obedience  that,  “conver- 
clad  in  thy  “brache”  only,  thou  go  to  Assisi, 
and  enter  into  a  church  and  preach  to  the  people.’  ” 

This  Ruffino  did,  and  presently  Francis  in  remorse 
“stripped  himself  in  like  manner  and  went  to  Assisi. 
And  the  men  of  Assisi  mocked  him,  thinking  he 
and  Ruffino  were  crazed.  ...  St.  Francis  mounted 
the  pulpit  and  preached  so  marvellously  of  con¬ 
tempt  of  the  world,  of  the  longing  for  the  kingdom 
of  heaven,  and  of  the  nakedness  of  the  shame  and 
Passion  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  that  all  who  were 
at  the  preaching,  men  and  women  in  great  multitude, 
began  to  weep  exceeding  much,  with  wondrous  devo¬ 
tion  and  piercing  of  heart;  and  not  only  there  but 


254 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


also  throughout  all  Assisi  there  was  on  that  day  so 
great  a  weeping  for  the  Passion  of  Christ  that  there 
had  never  been  the  like.” 

If  any  of  those  men  and  women  received,  not 
compunction  for  a  day,  but  devotion  for  a  lifetime, 
this  was  the  manner  of  their  spiritual  birth;  and 
Francis  was  their  father  in  Christ  and  he  begat 
them  unto  a  lively  faith  by  the  truth  and  the  passion 
for  the  truth  which  was  in  his  soul  and  beat  upon 
theirs.  This  was  “conversion”  as  Wesley  and  Whit¬ 
field  knew  conversion,  and  the  manner  of  it  was 
the  same,  in  all  that  matters  for  the  soul,  as  when 
the  preacher  who  works  the  conversion  is  a  woman 
in  a  home  and  the  convert  is  a  child  on  the  hearth 
beside  her.  Whether  “men  of  violence  take  the  king¬ 
dom,”  or  a  babe  strays  into  it  unaware  is  all  one: 
they  enter  into  life  eternal,  and  what  can  they  more 
than  this  ?  They  enter  through  a  communion,  a  pas¬ 
sionate  or  a  still,  but  a  communion  which  they  have 
with  their  fellow  men  in  a  communion  which  these 
and  they  have  with  Christ. 

Have  I  found  my  answer  to  the  question  which 
began  this,  What  is  the  Church  ? — the  answer 
which  was  to  be  procured  me  by  the  principle  that 
salvation  is  life,  and  that  the  Saviour  both  at  one 
time  made  and  now  in  all  time  is  making  men  to 
live  by  His  human  person  of  Jesus  exercising  a  hu¬ 
man  faculty  ? 


THE  CHURCH 


255 


My  answer  is  this,  that  when  we  name 
the  Church,  not  in  the  popular  and  concrete  ^pfep0rfin’ 
sense  as  a  noun  of  multitude  denoting  the  Churchis 

°  in  grace 

aggregation  of  believers,  but  in  a  scientific  whatteiep- 
sense  connoting  some  abstract  law  of  human  nature. m 
fact,  we  mean  a  certain  principle  of  the 
soul’s  life  unto  God.  That  principle  is  that,  though  in 
the  ultimate  fact  a  soul  receives  its  life  by  a  direct 
immediate  communication  from  Christ  in  God,  it  re¬ 
ceives  life  proximately  by  a  communication  of  it 
from  Christ  through  the  human  brotherhood.  This 
transmission  of  life  to  each  individual  Christian  is 
effected  by  an  act  and  condition  of  self-interchange 
at  once  of  Church  with  individual ,  and  of  Christ 
with  both.  It  is  a  triune  communion  in  which  the 
three  terms  interpenetrate.  The  process  of  this  com¬ 
munion  is  mystical,  and  is  like  to  remain  for  ever 
mystical;  hut  the  human  understanding  may  hope 
in  the  growth  of  the  world’s  spiritual  experience  to 
attain  to  a  more  and  more  intimate  analysis  of  the 
mystery,  and  certainly,  at  each  stage  in  the  advance 
of  human  knowledge  of  natural  fact,  to  master  a  new 
conception  of  spiritual  fact,  which  shall  be  not  less 
wide  and  deep  and  luminous  than  is  at  that  epoch 
our  conception  of  man’s  place  in  physical  and  social 
nature.  Our  knowledge  of  that  nature  has  of  late 
achieved  an  advance  which  is  very  great.  We  have 
discovered  that  a  man  is  able,  though  under  condi¬ 
tions  which  as  yet  we  have  not  discovered  except  in 
very  small  part,  to  apply  the  energy  of  his  mind  and 


256 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


will  to  the  mind  and  will  of  another  man  with  whom 
he  is  not  in  any  contact  or  even  continuity  that  can 
at  present  be  discerned.  To  this  fact  we  give  the 
names  of  telepathy,  thought-transference,  and  others. 
We  consider  it  as  truly  a  fact  of  the  natural  order 
as  gravitation,  electricity,  and  the  transmission  of 
light  and  sound. 

My  surmise  is — and  for  my  own  self  I  must  con¬ 
fess  it  as  not  a  surmise  but  an  assurance — that  this 
fact  of  nature  is  the  likest  image  under  which 
can  be  conceived  the  facts  of  grace. 

In  the  divinely  directed  evolution  of  the  universe, 
the  telepathy  or  thought-transference  of  mortal 
man  and  man  is  ripened  into  the  faith-transference 
of  man  with  man,  and  once  in  history  of  men  with 
the  Man  Jesus  of  Nazareth.  This  telepathy  belonged 
still  to  the  natural  order.  That  Jesus  exercised  this 
force  upon  His  contemporaries  is  a  matter  of  historic 
testimony,  as  I  read  the  New  Testament.  That  at 
this  day  faith  makes  faith  between  man  and  man 
is  a  matter  of  ready  observation.  But  our  knowl¬ 
edge  of  human  fact  has  gone  a  step  or  two  across 
the  border  of  the  natural.  Some  of  us,  Relieving 

a  divine-  w^ere  we  cannot  prove,”  as  yet,  perceive  a 
human  telepathy  by  which  Jesus  the  Man,  glorified 
telepathy.  become  one  with  God,  exerts  upon  His 

mortal  brethren  at  this  day  the  same  force  of  faith- 
transference,  the  same  communication  of  thought 
spiritual  and  act  spiritual,  as  He  exerted  upon  His 


THE  CHURCH  257 

contemporary  disciples  when  He  was  J esus  the 
prophet  of  Hazareth  in  Galilee. 

This  belief  we  trust  not  to  believe  only  hut  to 
prove,  though  each  one  at  first  only  to  himself,  in 
that  way  in  which  alone  “things  worthy  proving 
can  be  proven.”  This  must  be  the  way  of  experi¬ 
ment  with  our  own  proper  person.  If  when  we  try 
to  live  unto  God  by  the  sacrifice  of  the  self,  we  find 
that  we  have  life  (and  how  can  we  be  mistaken  in 
this?),  we  know  that  God  is  there.  And  if  when 
we  attempt  that  special  and  most  vital  act  of  life, 
the  interchange  of  our  own  mind  and  wiil  with  the 
mind  and  will  of  J esus,  known  through  His  temporal 
ministry  and  the  Church’s  thereafter  experience, — 
if,  I  say,  when  we  attempt  this  communion  with 
the  Man  Christ  Jesus  thus  manifested,  we  find  the 
communion  comes  to  pass,  that  we  do  have  the 
mind  of  Christ  in  our  thinkings,  and  do  will  the  will 
of  Christ  in  our  doings — the  mind  and  will  known 
to  us  through  the  records — ;  then  it  is  proved  to 
us  that  the  life  of  which  We  are  aware  is  wrought  in 
us  this  way.  It  is  wrought  by  a  thought  of  Jesus, 
which  reflects  itself  in  the  dim  mirror  of  our  brain 
and  heart,  by  a  deed  of  Jesus  of  which  some  slender 
doing  of  ours  is  the  faint,  far-off  yet  not  despised 
reverberance. 

So  then  if  I  must  define  “ Church”  in  such  mean¬ 
ing  of  the  name  as  can  become  a  fountain  head  of 
inferences  in  doctrine  and  in  practice,  inferences  as 
to  the  Church’s  proper  rights  over  men  and  work 


258 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


upon  them,  and  the  proper  duty  and  rights  of  men 
toward  her,  I  have  to  pronounce  my  definition  thus : — 

The  Church  of  Christ  is  not  a  personality,  though 
we  call  her  Bride  of  the  Christ  and  Mother  of 
Christians;  nor  is  she  even  a  thing,  in  the  sense 
of  having  substance  and  parts.  She  is  a  principle 
of  things,  a  principle  of  personal  and  corporate 
life.  She  is  a  law  of  grace,  as  gravitation  and 
evolution  are  laws  of  nature.  This  principle  or 

church  is  law  is  life.  Life  constitutes  the  Church, 

the  life  of  but  life  jn  a  specific  mode.  For  while  all 
a  triune  .  x 

com-  life  is  a  communion  of  two,  the  life  of 
Church  is  a  triune  communion,  a  self-inter¬ 
change  of  the  three  terms — Christ,  the  Church,  the 
Member — of  each  with  the  other  two.  Regarding  it 
from  the  side  of  the  single  soul,  but  of  the  soul  as 
a  member  of  the  spiritual  community,  it  is  the  life 
unto  God  not  as  it  comes  to  him  by  immediate  inter¬ 
course  with  the  Divine,  hut  as  it  is  quickened  when, 
by  his  own  communion  with  the  brotherhood  in  that 
brotherhood’s  communion  with  the  Man  Christ  Jesus, 
he  himself  has  his  fellowship  with  the  Father  and 
with  His  Son  Jesus  Christ.  “The  words  I  speak 
unto  you,”  said  Jesus,  “they  are  spirit  and  they  are 
life.”  The  word  Christ  speaks  to  us  through  the 
name  of  “Church,”  it  is  life,  and  life  on  this  manner. 

Last  that  metaphor  of  St.  Paul’s,  that  the  Church 
is  the  Body  of  Christ. 


THE  CHURCH 


259 


This  is  no  metaphor  as  the  others  were.  „ 

^  Church  the 

It  is  direct  matter  of  fact.  He  did  not  by  Body  of 
“body”  mean  merely  a  whole  having  various  Chust’ 
parts  with  several  functions.  He  meant  a  body  like 
that  of  his  or  this  of  mine.  What  is  a  body  ?  Again 
I  ask  it  as  I  did  over  the  problem  of  the  Resurrec¬ 
tion  of  the  flesh.  There  I  said — and  now  it  seems 
to  me  a  cold  and  pedantic  phrase — a  body  is  the 
sum  of  relations  between  a  living  creature  and  the 
world  in  which  it  lives.  Can  I  now  better  that  ? 
Body  is  the  communion  of  a  spirit  with  other  spirits, 
it  is  the  actualising  of  a  mutual  life  between  person 
and  persons;  brain  and  heart  and  nerve  and  sinew 
are  the  various  detail  of  a  life-action  set  up  by  two 
personal  factors,  a  man  and  his  fellow,  who  pass 
the  forces  of  one  to  the  other  by  sight  and  sound 
and  gesture  and  expression,  and  activities  of  hands 
and  feet.  It  is  the  communicator  of  living  being’s 
self  to  living  being,  and  it  is  the  creator  of  new 
being  that  can  live.  Flower  genders  flower  with 
a  seed  that  is  in  itself,  oak  with  its  acorn  generates 
oak  again.  In  the  being  born  as  in  the  dying  the 
Greek  poet’s  word  is  true,  “as  are  the  generations 
of  the  leaves  of  the  wood  so  are  those  of  men”;  for 
in  whatever  higher  family  the  lamp  of  life  is  handed 
on,  that  which  is  handed,  torch  and  flame  alike,  from 
one  to  other,  is  part  and  parcel  of  the  life-bearing 
body  from  whose  hand  it  came. 

A  body  then  is  that  which  makes  life  to  be  and 
enables  new  life  to  come  into  being.  It  is  in  this 


260 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


meaning  of  the  word  that  the  Church  is  the  Body 
of  Christ.  She  is  the  communion  of  Christ  with 
the  men  who  are  already  His,  and  the  communicator 
of  Christ  to  other  men  He  hath  who  shall  also 
become  His  own. 


So  far  I  wrote,  and  then  thought  of  my  mother. 
Will  language  of  this  sort  content  that  reverence 
and  affection  of  hers  which  she  turns  upon  that 
mystic  living  creature,  servant  of  the  Most  High, 
the  Holy  Church  sprung  from  the  Blood  of  Christ? 
Ho,  I  can  hear  her  saying,  “Can’t  you  teach  us  this 
in  a  more  human  way,  and  not  as  do — well,  the 
theologians  ?” 

Yes,  in  a  more  human  way  than  these  “theolo¬ 
gians,”  if  they  teach  that  the  Church  is  the  Body  of 
And  the  on^  Christ.  For  she  is  the  Body  of  J esus. 
Body  of  who  is  the  Christ. 

Jesus  ^ 

In  a  sainted  scholar’s  book,  now  of  more 
than  a  generation  ago,  I  read  his  endeavour  to  unify 
the  Risen  Body,  in  which  Jesus  showed  Himself 
alive  to  His  disciples  during  forty  days,  with  the 
Body  Mystical,  whereby  He  is  with  disciples  all  the 
days.  My  memory  of  how  he  worked  out  his  thought 
has  grown  faint,  and  the  book  is  missing  from  my 
shelves.  But  however  the  scholar  worked  it  for 
himself,  to  me  the  thought  to-day  is  clear,  and  sound. 
They  are  not  two  but  one,  the  Risen  Body  and  the 
Mystical;  one  not  by  likeness  but  identity,  for  the 
function  of  both  is  one,  and  it  is  only  func- 


THE  CHURCH 


261 


tion  that  makes  body  what  it  is.  With  the  body 
which  re-visited  the  Upper  Room,  Jesus  re-made 
the  communion  of  His  few  from  Galilee;  with  the 
body  mystical,  the  Church  of  yesterday,  to-day, 
and  for  ever,  He  moment  by  moment  visits 
new  generations  of  the  faithful,  and  brings  them 
to  the  birth  of  that  same  communion  whereby  men 
live  to  God  through  a  life  they  have  to  Jesus  in 
whom  God  is  Man. 

The  Church  that  is  Christ’s  Body  is  the  Body  of 
Jesus.  The  mystical  and  wonderful  is  also  the 
human  and  the  real. 

Thanks  be  to  God  for  His  unspeakable  gift. 

If  the  Church  is  the  Body  of  Christ  Jesus,  the 
communication  of  Him  to  men,  what  then  is  the 
member  of  Church  ?  But  that  has  almost  said  itself 
in  the  giving  him  that  name.  He  is  a  mem- 

^  .  •  The 

ber  of  the  body  spiritual  no  otherwise  than  member  of 
eye,  ear,  tongue,  and  hand  are  members  of  t  s 
the  body  natural.  For  how  is  that?  What¬ 
ever  is  done  by  an  organ  of  our  fleshly  frame  is  done 
by  the  entire  organism.  The  eye  can  of  itself  do 
nothing.  Seeing  is  an  act  not  of  the  retina,  but  of 
the  body,  acting  at  that  point  of  its  surface  through 
a  co-operation  of  the  general  nervous  system,  itself 
supported  by  the  system  of  muscle,  bone,  and  vein. 
“The  light  of  the  body  is  the  eye,  and  if  thine  eye 
be  single  the  whole  body  shall  be  full  of  light” :  yes, 
and  also  the  eye  can  give  us  no  light  unless  the  whole 


262 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


body  is  full  of  light  to  give  the  eye  its  power  to 
lighten  us.  Such  an  organ  is  the  individual  soul.  It 
has  vision,  hearing,  apprehension,  speech — by  forces 
of  the  society  which  energise  at  that  nerve-point  of 
the  social  organism  which  is  the  person  of  a  member. 
When  then  a  new  convert,  as  Paul  the  Pharisee, 
enters  into  communion  with  Christ,  it  is  an  act  not 
of  his  sole  self,  but  of  the  spiritual  commonwealth 
acting  in  and  through  that  self.  Without  the 
Church  the  man  could  not  see  the  vision  or  do  the 
deed,  as  neither  can  the  Church  have  deed  or  vision 
without  the  prophet  who  sees  or  the  soldier  who 
can  achieve. 

And  yet  if  our  un-catholic  brethren  are  wrong, 
who  would  merge  the  personality  of  the  Church  in 
the  sand-heap  of  the  atoms  who  compose  her, 
neither  may  the  Church  efface  the  member,  as 
perhaps  are  inclined  other  brethren  whom  we 
might  name  the  “unco-catholic.”  (I  am  looking 
at  Rome  in  this;  I  do  not  so  often  see  an  Anglo- 
Catholic,  at  least  if  he  is  a  man  and  a  priest,  divest 
himself  of  personal  independence  in  matters  of 
judgment  or  practice.)  If  the  Body  of  Christ  is 
mystic  and  wonderful,  so  also  is  the  member ; 
if  the  Church  is  ineffable,  neither  is  there  the  speech 
which  can  utter  the  mystery  of  the  single  soul.  So¬ 
ciety  and  Individual — neither  of  the  two  is  the  other, 
each  of  them  is  both.  They  are  the  Duality  in  Unity, 
which  philosophy  cannot  interpret  nor  yet  can  deny, 
any  more  than  theology  can  interpret  the  doctrine 


THE  CHURCH 


263 


of  Three  who  are  One  in  heaven.  But  I  am 
sure  my  mother  will  not  require  me  to  make 
clear  to  her  this  that  is  dark  to  every  one.  It  will  be 
enough  if  when  we  two  seek  the  Lord  and  speak 
one  with  the  other,  there  arises  some  distincter, 
more  inspiring  image  of  that  which  has  been  to  her 
a  shape  of  mystery  and  romance,  her  reverent 
passion’s  aim,  the  Church  which  is  Christ’s  Body, 
now  known  to  he  His  Body  indeed,  because  She  is 
one  of  God’s  living  creatures,  who  lives  by  eternal 
communion  with  the  Christ  who  is  Jesus,  and  she 
draws  all  men  unto  Him  by  a  life  which,  through 
her,  men  can  have  unto  a  Man. 

Ah  me!  that  haunting  phrase  from  the  epic,  that 
shaped  the  ideal  of  an  earthly  communion,  Rome. 
Italiam  petimus  fugientem.  The  more  we  pursue 
the  idea  of  Church  with  our  toiling  definitions,  the 
more  it  flies  back  beyond  our  attainment.  Each 
image  of  logic  or  fancy  in  which  we  try  to  grave  her 
likeness — Bride,  Mother,  Body — becomes  as  soon  as 
we  fashion  it  a  despised  broken  idol.  The  emotion 
in  the  heat  of  which  we  cast  a  similitude  for  our 
worship  has  cooled,  and  lo,  there  has  come  out  of  the 
fires  of  thought  and  passion  only  this  dry,  meagre, 
soulless  effigy,  of  which  our  late  ardour  is  ashamed. 
But  thus  to  have  put  to  shame  the  idol 

The  j<3eai 

image  of  it,  graven  by  man’s  device,  is  the 

very  proof  of  divineness  in  that  which  our  worship 

would  pursue.  It  is  to  the  Lamb  of  God  that  the 


264 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Church  is  Bride,  it  is  of  the  men  of  “our  fair  father 
Christ’7  that  she  is  Mother,  of  Jesus  who  is  Christ 
the  Life  that  she  is  the  body.  How  should  our  earth- 
bound  imaginations  compass  her  who  is  so  encom¬ 
passed  of  the  Eternal  ? 

Hay,  but  since  she  is  the  body  of  Christ  who  is 
Jesus,  since  her  being  springs  from  and  hangs  upon 
One  who  within  his  Godhead  still  is  a  Man,  we  can 
somewhat  know  her,  though  it  be  no  more  than 
as  we  know  our  own  self.  This  knowledge  of  his 
own  personal  being,  who  and  \vhat  he  is,  a  Paul 
had  and  any  Christian  can  have, — “for  me  to  live 
is  Christ.”  But  “to  live  is  Christ”  speaks  not  a 
doctrine  but  an  experience,  because  that  Christ  is 
Jesus,  and  a  man’s  spirit  can  have  experience  of 
Spirit  when  it  is  a  Man’s.  So  much  can  be  his 
knowledge  also  of  the  Church’s  being,  of  what  reality 
in  the  world  of  things  she  is  the  name.  For  her  as 
for  him  to  live  is  Christ, — but  Christ  who  is  Jesus, 
He  Himself,  the  same  that  died  and  lives. 


CHAPTER  XXII 


THE  TRIUNE  COMMUNION  IN  SECULAR  LIFE 

The  words  which  Christ  speaks  unto  us  when  Church 
is  named,  they  are  spirit  and  they  are  life,  I  said. 
Ah !  but  are  they  also  flesh  and  blood  ?  This  abstrac¬ 
tion  of  a  triune  communion  which  I  call  the  Church, 
is  it  an  empty  spectral  thing,  spirit  that  cannot 
embody  itself  in  the  matter  of  practical  human  work 
and  fortune  ?  Or  will  it  be  one  of  those  words  which 
have  feet  and  hands,  in  Plato’s  phrase,  and  so  be 
a  doer,  in  the  sphere  of  the  religious  interest?  Will 
it  interpret  the  rights  and  duties  of  Christian  men 
in  those  disputes  about  doctrine  which  they  once 
thought  so  important  that  a  solution  was  to  be  reached 
by  the  sword  or  by  the  stake,  and  even  now  think, 
some  few  of  them,  may  be  settled  by  banishment 
from  a  commonwealth  of  Christ  ? 

Till  I  come  to  an  a  posteriori  proof  of  my  method’s 
efficacy  by  taking  my  organum  of  inquiry  (to  myself 
at  least  a  Hovum  Organum)  and  trying  its  edge 
upon  one  or  more  of  those  problems  which  are  the 
stubborn  knots  within  the  mass  of  the  whole  problem 
of  “Church,”  I  do  not  expect  or  deserve  to  gain  the 
admission  from  others  that  my  tool  can  cut.  But  I 

265 


266 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


may  create  a  favourable  predisposition  of  the  public 
judgment  if  first  I  can  point  out  that  the  principle 
of  what  I  call  the  Triune  Communion,  and 

The  Tri-  . 

une  com-  have  asserted  to  be  the  meaning  of  “Church,” 

mumon  m  «g  ^  jaw  0f  jjfe  not  only  in  man’s  spiritual 
the  nation.  .  d  r 

existence,  where  it  is  least  demonstrable 
owing  to  the  faint  visibility  of  the  material,  but  also 
in  man’s  political  functioning.  There  one  should  he 
able  to  read  it,  not  indeed  writ  large,  but  writ  in 
the  coarser  and  blunter  type  of  tangible  acts  and  suf¬ 
ferings,  such  as  journalist  and  historian  can  placard 
before  our  sight.  This  writing  I  will  try  to  read  off. 
What  is  a  Ration? 

It  is  one  term  in  a  relationship  of  three.  The  two 
others  are  the  Man  and  the  Race  of  men.  For  more 
precision  in  our  study  of  them  let  us  call  the  three — 
the  Citizen,  the  State,  and  the  Civilised  World. 

The  existence  of  the  citizen  and  his  State  is 
maintained  by  a  twofold  communion  of  each  term 
with  the  other  two,  a  triune  intercourse  of  the  three. 
It  is  thus : 

(1)  The  State  can  hold  itself  in  life  only 

The  i  i  •  /i  «  ^  n  l*  •  .  *  i  •  •  *|  i 

by  a  lire  oi  fellowship  with  its  individual 
members  on  one  side,  and  with  the  world  of  nations 
on  the  other. 

There  must  be  fellowship  of  State  and  Citizen. 
Their  self-interchange  is  a  self-sacrifice  of  the  man 
to  the  needs  of  the  community  met  by  the  com¬ 
munity’s  self-giving  to  him,  that  is,  by  the  creation 
of  him  under  God  by  the  community,  his  preserva- 


TRIUNE  COMMUNION 


267 


tion  and  all  the  blessings  of  this  common  life  of 
him  and  his.  For  instance — and  it  is  hut  one  typical 
instance — in  peace  time  the  man  must  produce  the 
national  wealth  by  his  industry,  and  his  country  must 
protect  his  exertions  by  arming  the  frontier  and 
policing  the  street :  in  war  time  the  man 
must  ( pace  certain  of  our  pacificists)  offer  to  fight 
for  his  home,  and  the  country  must  put  a  rifle  in 
his  hand,  and  direct  him  where  to  go  with  it  and 
how  to  use  it. 

But  there  must  also  be  fellowship  of  State  and 
Civilised  World,  for  these  have  to  live  together, 
though  one  State  in  Europe  ignores  that  necessity 
at  present.  Humanity,  or  that  portion  of  it  which 
is  humane,  does  not  suffer  to  live  in  permanence 
a  national  power  which  will  not  yield  a  vital  response 
to  the  pressure  of  the  whole  upon  the  part. 

Nineveh  and  Babylon,  Spain  and  Napoleon’s 
France  did  not  defer  to  that  whole  and  did  not 
endure;  Greece  survives,  not  in  Alexander’s  empire, 
but  in  the  “glory  that  was  Greece,”  her  gift  to  the 
world  of  mind;  Rome  survived,  not  in  Caesar’s  mas¬ 
tery  of  the  Orbis  Romomus  but  in  Roman  Law,  her 
gift  to  the  world  of  order  and  justice.  Germany 
will  survive,  not  in  her  Caesarism  nor  in  that  Kultur 
which  she  recognises,  but  in  a  humanity  not  extinct 
in  the  better  strain  of  her  populations,  though  en¬ 
crusted  for  the  time  in  Caesar’s  crocodile  mail. 

(2)  The  Citizen  must  be  in  fellowship  with  his 
national  kind  and  with  humankind,  and  the  one  fel- 


268 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


lowsliip  must  be  realised  through  the  other.  If  he 
is  to  live  and  his  days  to  be  long  in  the  land,  he  must 
The  keep  the  Fifth  Commandment;  not  however 

only  as  it  was  said  to  men  of  old  time,  by 
honouring  the  family  and  the  race  that  begat  him,  but 
by  so  honouring  this  as  not  to  dishonour  the  All- 
Family  of  earth,  which  is  named  after  the  Father¬ 
hood  of  heaven.  This  is  why  if  the  citizen  is  in 
political  office  he  must  use  his  best  wit  in  guidance 
of  the  country’s  international  politics,  but  not  in  the 
contriving  of  another  state’s  ruin  by  signing  compacts 
with  the  purpose  of  a  surprise  by  breaking  them ;  and 
if  he  is  a  private  soldier  must  use  his  bayonet  in 
charging  the  enemy,  not  in  killing  a  babe,  even  if 
his  State  has  ordered  it.  And  again  the  man’s  fel¬ 
lowship  with  the  State  must  be  the  State’s  fellow¬ 
ship  with  him ;  he  has  not  only  duties  to  it  but  rights 
against  it.  The  State  may  drill  him  in  the  rank  or 
labour  him  in  the  steel  factory,  but  her  officers  must 
not  treat  the  linesman  as  men  treat  their  beasts,  nor 
the  civilian  as  men  deal  with  vermin.  Such  unfel¬ 
lowship  makes  life  for  neither,  it  deadens  the  unit 
and  unsinews  the  mass. 

(3)  And  the  Whole,  the  Comity,  which 

The  kind.  v  7  / 

ought  to  be  the  community,  of  nations,  what 
is  its  law  of  life,  if  not  a  fellowship  both  with  State 
and  citizen,  and  with  each  through  the  other  ? 

Humanity  at  large  claims  the  loyalty  of  the  man, 
but  with  what  an  inspiration  she  repays  it!  What 
power  under  heaven  so  raises  man’s  stature,  as  the 


TRIUNE  COMMUNION 


269 


love  of  mankind  that  comes  before  bim  when  be  lifts 
his  eyes  over  the  frontier  of  the  tiibe  and  finds  that 
all  that  is  human  is  lovable  and  the  service  of  it  a 
joy.  But  how  came  this  communion  of  the  man 
and  humanity?  It  came  to  him  not  direct,  but 
through  his  love  of  parent  and  brother  in  the  family, 
and  then  of  kinsman  in  the  tribe. 

And  Humanity  claims  the  loyalty  of  the  Nation. 
She  is  sovereign  over  the  sovereign  state,  though 
Germany  claim  to  be  “over  all,”  and  Prussia  knows 
of  nothing  higher  than  her  Caesar  and  holier  than 
the  “Holy  Empire,”  of  late  years  restored  (as  she 
says)  in  him.  But  with  what  beneficence  the  lord- 
ship  of  humanity  exalts  her  lieges,  if  they  will  but 
a  little  endeavour,  as  mortals  can,  to  be  holy  and 
humble  men  of  heart.  Eor  could  not  England  under 
the  storm  that  suddenly  blackened  over  her  fortunes 
dare  to  avow,  with  a  thankfulness  purged  of  pride, 
that  if  her  empire,  which  a  foe  thought  must  crumble 
at  a  shock,  stands  fast,  cemented  with  firmness  as 
of  iron  and  vigour  as  of  blood,  it  is  because  she 
conquered  lands  not  all  for  pride  but  for  their 
people’s  wealth  as  our  own;  and  is  mistress  of  the 
seas,  on  the  terms  that  she  suffers  no  other  to  master 
the  sea’s  freedom  for  himself. 

That  threefold  fellowship  then  of  member  and 
whole  and  greater  whole,  which  I  found  interpret 
the  nature  and  office  of  Church,  is  also  the  organic 
law  too  plain  to  be  missed  of  the  existence  of  State. 
That  abstraction  of  the  triune  communion,  viewed 


270 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


on  the  concrete  field  of  politics,  proves  no  empty, 
spectral  thing,  but  a  solid  framework  sustaining 
and  ordering  the  flesh  and  blood  of  that  very  living 
creature  of  God,  a  civil  society  of  men.  That  is 
encouraging.  If  my  method  works  so  well  in  the 
sphere  of  the  practical,  it  is  likely  in  the  spiritual- 
material  to  be  even  more  at  home. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 


THE  HOLY  CATHOLIC  CHURCH 


Well,  I  have  seen  what  the  Church  is,  viewed  by 
the  light  of  my  method.  Can  I  by  the  same  light 
read  her  names  of  Church  Holy  and  Catholic  ? 

These  are  of  course  not  two  names  but  one. 
“Holy”  is  only  “whole,”  and  “Catholic”  means  “on 
the  whole”  (  kclOoXov  ),  and  each  is  but  change  of 
spelling  for  “hale,”  and  “hale”  is  synonym  for  “liv¬ 
ing”  or  “live,”  and  “health”  for  “life.” 

Then  the  Holy  Catholic  Church  means  the  Living 
Church,  and  it  means  nothing  less  wide  and  great 
and  wonderful,  than  the  Church  which  is  alive  unto 
God  through  Christ. 


Does  any  one  dispute  this?  Xot  as  it  stands  in 
this  largeness  of  conception.  For  we  are  all  agreed 
that  the  Holy  Ghost,  the  Giver  of  Life,  is  the  maker 
of  the  Church.  And  how  can  He  make  her  other¬ 
wise  than  by  making  her  alive  ? 

Yet  some  who  are  content  to  say  that  «Cattl0lic» 
the  Church  Catholic  is  the  Church  Living and 

“Living.” 

will  be  less  content  if  I  were  to  go  on  and 
say  that  the  parts  and  members  of  Church  are  cath¬ 
olic  only  if  they  are  alive; — the  articles,  I  mean, 


271 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


of  her  creeds,  her  institutions  of  Order  and  Sacra¬ 
ment,  her  rules  of  life.  They  would  say  that  living¬ 
ness  is  too  vague  a  test  of  what  is  catholic,  and 
The  that  Vincent  gives  us  in  his  canon  a  test 
Vincentian  which  is  distinct  and  workable — Catholic  is 
“that  which  has  been  believed  everywhere, 
always,  and  by  all.” 

I  can  go  with  them  if  I  may  take  Vincent  at  his 
word — his  own  word,  not  that  of  some  interpreters, 
those  who  think  ubique  means  everywhere  within 
the  bounds  of  the  Christendom  known  to  Vincent, 
and  semper  means  the  first  four  centuries  of  Church 
history,  and  ab  omnibus  means  the  multitude  of  them 
that  believe  at  the  epoch  when  a  question  of  faith 
rises  for  decision.  But  I  cannot  suppose  Vincent  was 
one  of  these  democrats  who  would  accept  the  voice  of 
the  multitude  as  the  voice  of  God,  or  that  he  consid¬ 
ered  the  then  territory  of  Christianity  to  be  final, 
and  the  people  of  his  or  any  generation  to  be  the 
men  with  whom  wisdom  would  die.  Cousin  Mark’s 
idea  of  the  Vincentian  Canon  has  always  satisfied  me. 
The  Ubique ,  Semper ,  Ab  Omnibus  are  just  the  three 
notes  of  life.  The  Church  is  Catholic  if  she  is  alive 
through  all  her  body,  and  if  the  life  abides  in  her  all 
the  time  she  has  the  two  notes  of  vitality,  extension 
in  space  and  extension  in  time.  But  another  note 
is  necessary,  not  extension  but  intensity.  Vain  were 
the  catholicity  of  a  belief  which  spread  everywhere, 
if  what  covered  the  space  were  only  a  shallow  film 
of  faint  acceptance;  or  its  persistence  in  time,  if 


THE  HOLY  CATHOLIC  CHURCH  273 


it  persisted  only  in  the  bosoms  of  a  few.  No,  this 
faith  must  be  found  not  merely  everywhere  over  the 
surface  of  the  body  corporate  of  believers,  but  also 
with  a  specific  density  at  every  point.  Not  all  Chris¬ 
tendom  must  hold  it  and  have  held  it  always,  but 
all  Christians  and  with  all  their  heart.  That  ab 
omnibus  was  a  rude  quantitative  way  of  expressing 
the  intensity  or  reality  of  the  belief  which  is  Catholic. 

But  the  quantitative  figure  is  not  an  adequate 
one.  Mark  thought  not,  and  translated  it  into  the 
figure  of  vitality,  and  I  am  following  him.  The 
Church  is  catholic  in  so  far  as  she  is  alive  unto 
God,  and  an  article  or  a  custom  is  catholic  in  so 
far  as  its  use  makes  those  who  believe  or  practice 
it  to  have  life,  and  to  have  it  abundantly. 

Will  any  churchman  care  to  dispute  this?  Again, 
not  as  it  stands  in  this  broad  generality.  Yet  as¬ 
sent  should  not  be  yielded  idly,  for  assent  will 
not  be  facile  when  we  begin  to  embody  the  prin¬ 
ciple  in  particulars,  and  have  to  ask  whether  the 
Episcopate  and  the  Threefold  Ministry  are  as  an 
organisation  exclusively  catholic,  whether  a  catholic 
Eucharist  can  be  celebrated  only  by  an  episcopally 
ordained  ministrant,  whether  the  Descent  into  Hades, 
the  Virginity  of  Mary,  the  physical  Resurrection, 
are  inseparable  elements  of  the  catholic  creed,  and 
immune  from  interpretation,  whether  our  church  in 
declining  to  impose  the  rules  of  confession  or  the  pre- 
communion  fast  is  forsaking  full  Catholicity. 


274 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


The  Lamp  My  doubt  is  whether,  if  we  bring  in  the 
°f  Life.  Lamp  of  Life  and  search  out  with  its  beam 
this  manner  of  question,  there  will  be  readiness 
everywhere  to  search  and  research  these  matters  un¬ 
der  that  light.  It  has  not  been  our  practice,  I  think, 
to  do  so.  The  Roman  Communion,  with  the  sym¬ 
pathy  of  many  in  our  own,  pronounces  those  things 
to  be  of  the  Catholic  faith  or  practice  which  the  Tra¬ 
dition  of  the  Church  vouches  for.  The  Anglican  com¬ 
munion  puts  in  the  place  of  authority  the  Bible.  But 
neither  is  an  original  fount  of  light.  Behind  both 
is  the  Lamp  of  Life;  its  beam  passes  through  them, 
and  their  transparency  is  not  pure  of  stain  or  re¬ 
fraction.  Letter  of  Scripture,  Law  of  Church,  they 
are  the  translation  into  thought  and  action,  doctrine 
and  practice,  worship  of  God  and  duty  to  men,  of 
the  creative  energy  which  holdeth  our  soul  in  life; 
they  articulate  and  time  the  rhythm  of  the  divine 
human  interchange,  the  reciprocity  of  stimulus  and 
response,  by  which  soul  of  man  and  soul  of  Church 
live  unto  God  through  a  life  they  have  each  to  the 
other. 

The  test  of  Is  it  not  so  ?  Search  the  Scriptures  where 
a  doctrine,  their  word  is  most  quick  and  powerful,  and 

judge  if  the  fountain-head  of  knowledge  is  really  in 
them.  Test  it  over  the  doctrine  of  the  Resurrection. 
Do  we  believe  in  the  Resurrection  because,  and  merely 
because,  it  is  written  that  one  rose  from  the  dead, 
Jesus  of  Nazareth?  No,  but  because  the  Resurrec¬ 
tion  is  a  fact  of  our  life,  of  all  of  us  and  also  each. 


THE  HOLY  CATHOLIC  CHURCH  275 


Our  belief  that  Jesus  rose  is  our  awareness 
of  a  vital  union  we  have  with  the  Eternal  World 
in  the  person  of  Jesus.  And  how  are  we  aware  of 
this  ?  We  are  made  aware  by  a  contact  we  have 
with  Him  through  the  persons  of  certain  members 
of  our  race  who  had  “seen  the  Lord/’  and  report 
their  seeing  in  the  record  of  their  time,  the  books 
of  the  Hew  Testament.  But  also  by  a  contact  with 
the  same  Jesus  through  our  own  person,  contact 
in  which  our  person  experiences  a  life  in  itself. 
Without  this  we  could  not  trust  the  other  evidence, 
though  without  that  other  we  could  not  put  con¬ 
fidence  in  this.  In  the  mouth  of  these  two  witnesses, 
but  in  neither  alone,  is  this  word  of  God,  His  great¬ 
est  to  man,  confirmed.  Well,  then,  it  is  not  the  Bible 
which  gives  us  this  truth,  but  the  fact  of  finite  man’s 
life  in  the  infinite,  which  has  one  reflection  in  the 
Writ  we  name  Holy,  and  another  in  a  Writing  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  on  fleshy  tables  of  mortal  minds 
and  wills. 

If  this  is  so  with  the  authority  of  the  Scripture, 
who  will  require,  at  least  among  my  brother-church¬ 
men,  that  I  should  exemplify  the  principle  in  the 
case  of  the  authority  of  the  Church  ? 

But  let  no  one  who  admits  the  principle  make 
little  of  the  admission.  Introduce  the  method  of 
inquiry  constructed  out  of  this  principle  into  our 
systems  of  belief  and  practice,  and  you  lodge  in  them 
a  force  which  will  penetrate  every  part  of  them  and 
make  all  things  become  new,  if  not  in  themselves 


n  6 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


yet  new  to  ourselves;  a  force  wliicli  will  transmit 
its  energy  through,  all  the  framework  of  our  con¬ 
ceptions  and  observances,  expanding  this  hut  per¬ 
haps  exploding  that,  and  electrifying  into  an  elastic 
vigour  all  that  cannot  be  shaken  but  remains. 


But  I  restrain  myself.  Perhaps  I  have  already 
overshot  the  mark  which  is  my  due  aim.  For  what 
is  that  ?  My  mark  is  the  commendation  of  a  method 
of  inquiry  into  the  final  truth  of  man’s  existence  in 
the  world  of  things,  the  method  which  I  call  the 
The  Ex-  Experiment  of  Living.  I  seek  to  persuade 
periment  my  brethren  to  test  with  me  our  system  of 
creed  and  conduct  by  this  experiment,  by 
trying  whether  and  how  much  all  the  parts  and  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  system  minister  life  to  the  corporate  and 
the  single  soul.  Shall  I  be  able  to  persuade  them, 
some  of  them  at  least,  if  it  should  appear  to  them  that 
their  own  interpretation  of  an  article  or  their  pre¬ 
ferred  mode  of  an  observance  will  suffer  shock,  if 
this  intruding  force  of  my  method  comes  too  near? 
It  is  requiring  much  of  them  to  require  this  right  of 
entry;  not  indeed  too  much,  but  more  than  needs 
at  this  stage.  The  Unjust  Steward,  in  Latham’s 
ingenious  reading  of  that  parable,  is  commended  to 
the  imitation  of  gospellers  in  the  point  that,  like 
him,  they  should  know  how  not  to  ask  too  much  of 
those  to  whom  they  are  ministers  and  stewards  of 
the  Gospel,  but  to  make  concessions,  like  his  reduc¬ 
tion  of  rents,  because  of  the  hardness  of  the  times, 
and  the  hearts  of  their  hearers.  Let  this  admonish 


THE  HOLY  CATHOLIC  CHURCH  m 


me.  I  will  ask  no  more  than  that  we  should  study 
together  our  common  faith  in  the  light  of  the  Holy 
Spirit  who  is  the  Giver  of  Life,  and  teaches  by  the 
life  lie  mediates  to  us.  But  to  ask  no  more  is  to 
ask  something,  if  it  is  something  on  a  believer’s  part 
to  yield  up  a  pre-conception  that  the  Bible’s  letter  is 
its  own  sole  and  final  interpreter,  or  that  the  whole 
inheritance  of  the  faithful  is  locked  up  as  in  a  sealed 
treasure-house  in  the  wisdom  of  centuries  fewer  than 
the  fingers  of  a  hand. 

But  this  is  a  delicate  task  I  am  setting  myself.  I 
am  to  illustrate  my  method,  but  to  do  so  without 
applying  it,  or  at  least  without  too  close  application 
to  too  much  cherished  particulars.  I  have  to  satisfy 
myself  and  my  friends  that  I  have  found  a  tool 
which  cuts,  hut  to  be  careful  not  to  cut  anything 
which  these  friends  will  not  submit  to  its  edge.  A 
delicate  task,  but  not  impossible.  Attempted  it  must 
be.  And  if  I  turn  the  edge  upon  the  surface  only 
of  a  few  problems,  go  only  so  deep  as  to  show  there 
is  keenness  to  go  deeper,  but  not  to  show  in  advance 
and  for  certain  what  actual  things  will  be  severed 
or  excised,  I  may  effect  that  which  is  my  only  de¬ 
sire  and  whole  duty  here — the  commending  of  the 
experiment  of  living  as  the  method  of  religion. 


CHAPTER  XXIV; 


“the  keligion  of  ale  good  men” 

I  must  choose  then  for  illustration  of  my  method’s 
efficacy  such  matters  of  church  creed  or  polity  as 
are  at  once  the  fittest  and  the  most  unfit  for  my 
actual  purpose — the  commendation  of  the  method. 
For,  if  I  want  to  be  attended  to  I  must,  as  speak¬ 
ing  to  Englishmen  of  my  own  or  any  church,  choose 
matters  which  are  of  practical  and  also  of  present 
concern,  such  as  the  re-union  of  divided  Christendom, 
the  principles  of  Episcopacy,  the  validity  of  Sacra¬ 
ments,  the  intercommunion  of  churches,  the  Orna¬ 
ments  Rubric,  the  rights  of  the  Quicunque.  These 
are  clearly  the  fittest  opportunities  to  exhibit  the 
efficiency  of  this  organum  of  inquiry.  But  at  the 
same  time  they  are  the  unfittest.  For  these  subjects, 
at  any  rate  the  narrowest  of  them,  are  those  on  which 
the  disputants  on  each  side  are  most  sure  that  their 
own  conclusion  is  the  only  possible  conclusion  and 
that  no  weapon  that  is  forged  against  it  can  prosper, 
or  even  be  considered  a  lawful  weapon.  If  he  who 
is  ready  as  churchman  to  die  before  a  priest  shall 
wear  a  chasuble  at  the  altar,  should  forecast  a  re¬ 
habilitation  of  the  celebrant  as  the  likely  issue  of  a 

278 


“THE  RELIGION  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN”  279 


reasoning  on  my  lines,  will  lie  not  think  that  reason¬ 
ing  to  be  a  logic  tainted  with  superstition?  If  his 
brother  churchman,  who  has  set  his  face  as  a  flint 
against  all  amendment  of  the  Quicunque  or  restric¬ 
tion  of  its  use,  should  fear  that  he  opens  a  door  to 
an  invasion  of  sacred  places  when  he  suffers  Revi¬ 
sion  of  the  Prayer  Book  to  be  controlled  by  the  ex¬ 
perience  of  life  unto  Christ,  will  he  not  suspect  that 
here  is  one  of  those  philosophies  with  which  faith 
must  have  no  dealings  ?  And  so  I  should  not  com¬ 
mend  my  method,  I  should  procure  its  rejection  un¬ 
tried. 

Fit  and  unfit,  however,  such  must  be  problems 
on  which  I  must  turn,  with  all  the  wariness  I  may, 
the  edge  of  this  instrument  of  sacred  science. 

i 

The  Re-union  of  Christendom 
This  will  be  the  safest  matter  for  the  illus- 

Re-union. 

tration  of  our  Method.  For  no  one — no  one 
churchman,  that  is,  for  I  do  not  say  no  church — has 
his  own  conclusion  ready  about  this,  and  nearly  every 
one  agrees  that  re-union  ought  somehow  to  come 
about.  So  I  will  put  in  just  my  humble  word  in  ad¬ 
vocacy  of  the  Method  of  Life.  That  word  shall  be 
that  the  other  means  of  re-union  which  are  before  us 
give  no  promise  at  all  of  effecting  it.  Rome’s  plan, 
the  submission  of  the  rest  of  Christendom  to  her 
system,  appears  to  seem  a  feasible  one  to  a  certain 

M 

group  of  intelligences  in  our  own  communion;  but 


280 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


to  the  rest  of  our  church  and  other  churches  has  not 
strength  enough  even  to  provoke  argumentation.  The 
counter  plan,  that  of  procuring  one  creed  for  all 
Christians  by  going  without  any  creed  for  anybody, 
has  more  following  and  less  force.  Our  “People 
of  a  Book,”  the  Reformed  Communions,  are,  I 
imagine,  no  longer  hopeful,  that  Luther’s  open  Bible, 
which  Martin  Tupper  said 


flew  unfurled 
Flag  of  freedom  to  the  world, 

is  also  a  banner  under  which  to  rally  it  and  reduce 
to  discipline.  Or  does  Episcopally-governed  Chris¬ 
tendom,  East  and  West,  cherish  any  vivid  or  solid 
hope  that  our  Church  Order  has  the  promise  of  uni¬ 
fication  ;  that  it  is  destined  to  be  the  magnetism  which 
will  draw  in  and  duly  cluster  and  dispose  the  scat¬ 
tered  magnitudes  of  the  divided  Body  of  Christ,  and 
thenceforward  be  the  gravitation  binding  all  in  one 
universe  of  Faith?  Ho,  not  one  of  these  solutions 
holds  the  field,  or  any  part  of  it,  in  force  or  confi¬ 
dence.  Is  there  yet  another  ? 

Why  yes.  There  is  still  “The  religion  of 

Th©  “re-  ° 

ligion  of  all  all  good  men.”  That  must  needs  be  a  uni¬ 
good i  men i,”  -ger  •£  p.  -g  re]ipi0n  of  all  the  good,  for 
what  is  it?  7  °  b  7 

none  but  the  good  is  it  possible  or  desirable 
to  unify.  But  then  the  religion  of  all  good  men — 
wdiat  is  it?  Has  any  one  stated  its  creed?  Those 
who  profess  this  religion  commonly  do  so  as  a  way 
of  declining  to  state  any  creed.  But  I  think  they 


“THE  RELIGION  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN”  281 


are  wiser  than  they  know  in  the  name  they  give  their 
profession.  For  what  are  the  good  men  of  whom  this 
is  the  religion  ?  “Why  callest  thou  me  good  ?  There 
is  none  good  but  one,  that  is  God.”  None  good  save 
God.  But  He  is  good.  Then  man  also  will  be  good 
so  far  as  his  being  can  be  identified  with  the  Being 
of  God,  can  be  according  to  the  most  consecrated 
word  “in”  God.  And  this  it  can.  For  to  be  in  union 
of  being  with  God,  what  is  it  else  than  to  have  a  life 
unto  God,  to  become  the  human  factor  in  the  divine- 
human  interchange  of  self,  the  mutual  indwelling; 
what  else  but  to  be  offering  in  sacrifice  the  mortal’s 
thoughts  and  purposes,  and  to  receive  in  grace  the 
mind  which  was  and  is  in  Christ  Jesus,  and  the 
power  from  on  high  which  is  the  will  of  the  Eternal. 
Here  among  things  mortal  is  the  image  by  which 
is  imageable  the  supreme  concern  of  man— the  union 
of  man  with  the  Divine,  the  “being  in”  God.  It  is 
the  image  given  in  the  fact,  Life.  The  invisible 
things  of  God  are  clearly  seen  through  the  things 
that  are  made ;  and  that  most  invisible  thing  of  God, 
the  Creator’s  relation  to  His  creature,  man  the  spirit, 
is  known  by  this  thing  that  is  manifest  to  our  senses 
— the  creative  relation  in  which  stands  to  the  Creator 
whatever  has  a  being  in  the  visible  encompassment 
of  Nature’s  waters  and  soils  and  airs.  Here  is  the 
image  which  can  image  to  us  our  destiny  of  man. 
By  this  aid  our  mind  can  mirror  and  our  will  can 
lay  hand  on  the  reality  that  saves  the  soul.  And 
having  found  this  image,  we  must  serve  ourselves  by 


282 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


no  other.  Those  by  which  hitherto  we  have  tried 
to  come  near  to  God  the  Unapproached;  calves  we 
made  in  Egypt,  man-like  deities  we  graved  in  Greece, 
even  those  fleshless  moulds  of  abstract  dogma  graven 
by  art  and  man’s  device  of  reverent  logic,  all  these 
similitudes  are  become  childish  things  and  must  now 
be  put  away.  They  are  idols  to  ensnare  the  soul  if 
we  trust  in  them  to  bring  us  near,  now  that  we  can 
be  brought  more  near,  and  nearer  by  how  many  spans, 
through  a  similitude  graven  not  with  our  hands  but 
the  creative  hand,  even  this  wonder  of  the  world,  this 
veiled  but  ever  more  unveiling  mystery,  life  that  is 
in  grass  of  the  field  and  spirit  of  men  and  in  all 
between  them,  life  that  is  diverse  in  each  by  each, 
and  in  all  of  them  is  the  same  and  one. 

The  “re-  There  really  is  then  a  “religion  of  all 
ligion  of  ail  ^Ood  men,”  though  it  may  be  not  in  the 

good  men”  &  &  17 

is  the  life  meaning  of  those  who  moulded  the  phrase, 
unto  God.  *g  re]igion  0f  Paving  life  unto  God, 

and  having  it  by  means  of  life  unto  Jesus  Christ, 
the  Man  that  is  with  God  and  is  God.  Is  the  Church 
divided  and  can  her  divisions  reunite  ?  They  can¬ 
not  unless  they  will  discern  and  return  to  the  point 
of  true  undividedness,  nearer  to  the  river-head  than 
the  branching  of  the  water  of  life.  No  church  at  pres¬ 
ent  consents  to  go  back  so  far.  One  church  supposes 
the  rally-point  is  acceptance  of  the  Bible,  one  a  cer¬ 
tain  administrative  system,  one  a  ministerial  Order, 
one  a  mould  of  religious  philosophy,  cast  long  ago 


“THE  RELIGION  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN”  283 


and  unalterable,  one  an  emotional  affection  without 
form  and  void.  We  cannot  rally  on  any  of  these. 
These  are  but  the  disentwined  strands  of  the  whole 
cord  of  Life,  which  holds  the  Church  in  life  by  union 
with  the  Source  of  Life.  What  is  the  Bible  but  a 
thread,  the  strongest  of  the  threads,  along  which  can 
pass  the  vital  thrill  in  which  the  human  knows  that 
it  hangs  upon  and  is  upholden  by  the  Divine  ?  What 
are  governments,  orders  of  ministry,  theologies,  heart- 
movements  of  adhesion  to  the  Unseen,  but  other 
threads  of  slenderer,  more  precarious  fibre  less 
firmly  holding  us  in  life  ?  We  shall  never  find  our¬ 
selves  together  till  we  feel  our  way  back,  each  of  us, 
along  the  strand  of  life  we  have  most  trusted,  and 
reach  the  point  where  it  issued  from  the  unsundered 
vital  unity,  and  began  its  separate  way.  The  life 
of  man  unto  Jesus  in  God — only  as  the 

churches  live  this  life  can  the  Church  betws  can  the 

one  and  undivided.  churches 

re-umte. 

Yes,  but  this  can  be  so  said  that  nothing 
is  said  by  it.  We  can  see,  I  shall  be  told,  a  mean¬ 
ing  in  churches  agreeing  to  use  one  Book  for  a  rule 
of  life,  one  Rite  for  a  mode  of  worship,  one  Polity 
for  the  administration  of  the  Christian  society;  it 
may  be  impossible  to  realise  the  thing,  but  at  least 
it  is  possible  to  frame  the  idea  of  it.  But  this  life 
unto  Christ  in  God,  thought  of  apart  from  any  of 
these  particulars,  is  a  form  of  words  without  con¬ 
tent  of  sense,  a  guide  of  faith  and  conduct  like  a 


284 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


map  without  features  and  landmarks;  this  appoint¬ 
ment  for  re-union  is  a  rendezvous  in  the  clouds. 

Not  so.  For  these  several  strands  of  Word,  Sacra¬ 
ment,  Order,  Doctrine  are  in  their  severalness  still 
continuous  with  the  knitted  cord  of  life,  from  which 
they  have  been  unravelled  into  distinctness  of  func¬ 
tion.  The  Written  Word  is  a  line  of  vitality  along 
which  man  makes  the  interchange  of  that  of  the  self 
which  is  the  intelligence;  the  Sacraments  are  a  path 
of  intercourse  for  his  affections,  the  Disciplines 
prompt  and  regulate  his  Godward  activities.  It  is 
this  communication  of  life  by  their  means  to  the  man 
who  uses  them  which  makes  Word,  Sacrament,  Order, 
Dogmatic  System  to  be  anything  at  all  in  religion. 
But  the  churches  which  so  use  them  as  to  draw  life 
in  the  use,  these  churches  are  at  one  just  in  the  de¬ 
gree  of  the  liveliness  of  the  life  they  draw,  however 
they  seem  at  disagreement  in  the  provisions  of  their 
rule  of  conduct,  in  the  ritual  of  their  worship,  in 
the  terminology  of  their  catechisms.  The  hope  en¬ 
tertained  by  many  would-be  union-makers,  that  some 
one  church  has  a  mode  of  Christian  thinking,  wor¬ 
shipping,  and  administrating,  which  if  all  would 
agree  to  use  it  would  make  all  to  be  one,  is  a  hope 
which  maketh  ashamed.  Those  who  sfcek  a  catholic¬ 
ity  of  this  character  will  never  reach  their  mark  nor 
yet  point  the  road  to  others  who  come  after  them. 
Their  effort  is  less  unfruitful  than  that  of  those  who 
propose  to  make  all  systems  one  by  evacuating  each 
of  all  distinctive  content;  less  unfruitful,  yet  of  lit- 


“THE  RELIGION  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN”  285 


tie  fruit.  There  is  no  mode  of  thought,  worship, 
discipline  which  is  the  one,  holy,  catholic  mode. 
Catholicity  is  not  a  mode:  it  is  not  a  way  of  doing 
a  thing,  it  is  a  force  which  does  it  by  whatever  way 
it  is  done.  In  the  Body  Catholic  of  Christendom 
the  Catholicity  is  not  the  frame  of  propor- 

J  -T  ir  The  bon(J 

tioned  and  compacted  members,  nor  the  net-  of  union  is 
work  of  arteries  and  sinews,  but  the  rhythm  rule  but 
which  pulses  the  life-current  through  the  the  life  in 
vein  and  the  lightning  which  speaks  a  mes¬ 
sage  along  the  nerve.  Nothing  less  elemental  and 
originative  than  this,  nothing  however  “primitive” 
which  is  not  primal,  can  be  the  bond  of  unity  for 
the  churches.  Nay,  even  for  the  members  of  a 
single  church  who  consider  themselves  united  the 
bond  of  their  union  is  not  the  creed  they  subscribe 
or  the  authorised  rite :  it  is  the  consciousness,  waked 
by  the  recital  or  the  celebration,  that  a  life  beats 
between  the  churchman  and  his  fellow  churchman, 
which  is  also  a  life  between  both  of  them  and  the 
Christ.  Herein  lies  the  truth  of  that  com-  Anglican 
prehension  of  our  own  church,  which  some  “Compre- 

hcnsion  ** 

think  her  reproach,  some  know  as  her  glory. 
Evangelic,  Sacramental,  Modernist  faith  are  one  faith 
not  three,  because  through  one  or  another  part  of 
the  believer’s  nature  all  have  in  common  one  self¬ 
same  vital  intercourse  with  one  Person,  the  Man 
Jesus  Christ,  the  Incarnate.  A  threefold  cord,  we 
say,  is  not  quickly  broken;  but  which  of  us  can 
have  even  the  desire  to  part  one  strand  of  these 


286 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


three,  or,  if  we  have  a  desire,  will  be  so  hardy  as 
to  utter  it? 

How  trite  and  conventional  and  blank  a  saying 
Unity  is  this  I  have  written — that  Christians  are 
through  one  through  one  devotion  to  the  Person  of 
of  Christ  the  Christ.  All  agree,  and  all  go  on  as  be- 
Jesus.  fore  with  the  wrangle  which  keeps  them 
many  and  not  one. 

Yes,  while  the  saying  is  “the  Person  of  the  Christ.  ” 
But  that  is  not  my  saying.  I  speak  of  the  Person 
of  Jesus,  the  Incarnate,  and  also  the  Man.  Is  that 
conventional  and  trite  and  blank?  Heaven  grant 
it  may  come  to  be  a  well-worn  and  agreed-on 
profession,  though  blank  it  can  be  never,  being  filled 
with  all  the  fulness  of  God’s  power  on  man. 

Hare  any  who  have  felt  the  touch  of  that  fulness 
on  their  own  spirit  and  mortal  flesh  seek  to  speak 
of  it  openly  with  their  brothers?  They  do  not  dare 
so  to  speak  of  it,  and  yet  perhaps  they  ought.  They 
will  venture  no  more  than  to  speak  it  to  themselves. 
But  in  that  colloquy  with  self  they  will  cast  back  a 
memory  to  some  hour  of  moral  choice,  a  great  choice 
or  a  very  small,  in  which  decision  came,  not  when 
the  man  saw  before  his  mind,  like  a  legend  written 
in  the  sky,  that  “thus  or  thus  is  the  law  of  Christ,” 
but  when  a  Presence  stood  by  him,  having  the  form 
(for  he  knew  it)  of  a  Man,  and  the  feature  and  voice 
of  that  one  Man,  Jesus  of  Hazareth;  and  under 
that  shadow  the  doubting  mortal  made  choice  to  for¬ 
bear  or  to  attempt  this  thing  or  that,  because  love 


“THE  RELIGION  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN”  287 


of  this  Jesus  the  Man  constraineth  him.  Then,  by 
a  health  that  quickened  in  his  spirit  and  his  very 
flesh,  he  knew  that  his  commune  had  been  with  J esus, 
and  that  Jesus  was  to  him  the  life. 

And  yet  must  the  discovery  that  the  Christ  Jesus  the 
whom  we  profess  is  Jesus  of  Nazareth  bring  Carpenter 
always  health  and  life  to  the  discoverer  ?  I  biing-biock 
read  as  a  boy  the  story  of  a  traveller  who,  t0  some* 
it  was  related,  had  through  a  journey  in  the  Holy 
Land  “lost  his  faith.”  (How  old-world  and  inappo¬ 
site  sounds  that  phrase  now  to  me ! )  It  was  too  hard, 
it  seems,  to  believe,  in  contact  with  the  physical  scene 
of  the  Ministry,  and  with  the  features,  dress,  speech, 
and  habits  of  Syrians  of  whom  after  the  flesh  Christ 
was,  that  a  Divine  Reality  was  here  in  a  working 
man  of  the  Syrian  town.  Jesus  had  been  a  work¬ 
man  in  Nazareth,  like  these  here.  How  then  could 
He  be  God  ?  So  Volney  lost  his  faith  in  Christianity. 
Lost?  Or  was  it  that  he  found  he  had  never  had 
it?  He  had  come  from  Europe,  supposing  that  he 
believed  Jesus  to  have  been  God  among  men,  but 
had  so  believed  because  he  had  never  asked  himself 
what  it  is  to  “be  God.”  How  many  Christians  do 
it ;  how  many  writers  even  on  Christianity  ask  them¬ 
selves,  What  is  it  to  be  God?  So  easy  to  say  it,  so 
hard  to  mean  it. 

But  not  all  who  go  to  Palestine  fare  as  Volney. 
I  know  one  traveller’s  tale  of  happier  note.  “One 
of  my  afternoons  at  Nazareth,”  he  said,  “I  had 
walked  by  myself  out  of  the  town  to  the  valley,  over- 


288 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


Fung  by  the  Latins’  ‘Mount  of  Precipitation/  a  glen 
mottled  with  rock  and  patches  of  greening  corn.  The 
Christ  may  have  sometimes  gone  this  way,  I  thought, 
along  this  very  track,  through  these  meadows  of  dry 
winter  grass.  Ah!  He  that  is  at  the  Right  Hand 
came  from  a  workshop  yonder  at  dawn  and  walked, 
stood,  knelt  on  this  sod,  where  I,  and  as  I,  to-day 
stand  and  kneel.  .  .  .  Then  something  happened 
like  nothing  I  have  known.  A  spell  seized  me.  Hot 

Toothers  a  rapture,  not  a  lifting  up:  it  was  heaven 
the  power  that  came  down  to  me,  came  near  me ;  came 
upon  me.  ‘The  Divine  Reality  once  was 
here/  under  my  breath  I  said,  ‘here  upon  these 
grasses  of  the  field,  the  Blessed  Feet  treading  them 
as  my  foot  treads  them,  the  eyes  resting  on  that 
same  hillside  before  mine,  the  hands  clasped  in  prayer 
to  the  Father  in  heaven,  hands  that  would  presently 
be  at  work  at  a  carpenter’s  bench  in  the  village  street 
behind  me.’  ” 

He  says  he  thought  what  had  happened  was  what 
some  call  a  “conversion.”  Yes,  it  made  him  begin 
to  understand  even  that  Conversion  which  wTe  name 
the  Wonderful.  For  did  not  Saul  the  Pharisee  in 
that  moment  of  vision  make  discovery  that  the 
Holy  One  of  Israel  had  truly  been  with  men  in  the 
person  of  this  Man  whom  he  persecuted  as  false 
prophet?  What  had  befallen  that  high  saint,  that, 
it  seemed,  was  befalling  this  humble  man  in  his 
most  unlike  and  narrow  fortune:  a  Voice  out  of  the 


“THE  RELIGION  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN”  289 


Eternal  was  speaking  to  Tiim,  “I  am  Jesus,  whom 
thou  confessest,  J esus  whom  thou  callest  Christ.” 

But  all  this  concerns  the  experience  of  the  single 
soul,  the  making  of  the  personal  faith.  This  may 
be  the  “religion  of  all  good  men,”  but  it  is  the  religion 
not  of  all  good  men  as  a  body,  but  of  each  good  man 
in  his  sole  self.  That  was  not  the  thing  I  was 
seeking  to  find.  I  was  to  find  the  religion  which 


should  be  that  not  of  all  men  hut  of  all  churches,  and 

thereby  a  religion  that  can  re-unite.  The 

But  in  finding  the  man’s  religion  I  have  fait^and 
found  the  Church’s.  The  corporate  faith  is  tbe  per‘ 

A  sonal  differ 

different  from  the  personal  only  as  the  as  church 
Church  is  different  from  a  churchman,  church- 
How  that  is,  we  know.  man* 

The  life  of  the  single  soul  unto  God  is  (abstract¬ 
edly  considered  apart  from  its  relation  to  the  Church) 
the  simple  communion  of  two,  the  soul  and  God.  The 
life  of  the  Church  is  not  simple  hut  complex,  a  com¬ 
munion  of  three,  the  Church,  the  member,  and  the 
Christ  in  God.  The  Church  lives  by  a  spiritual 
intercourse  with  the  Christ  and  also  with  her  mem¬ 
ber,  and  the  one  intercourse  is  involved  in  the  other ; 
the  mutual  sacrifice  of  a  church  and  the  churchman 
is  at  the  same  time  and  by  its  very  nature,  a  sacri¬ 
fice  of  each  of  the  two  agents  to  the  Christ.  Thus 
the  believer  renders  loyalty  and  service  to  his  Church, 
yet  not  truly  to  her  hut  to  that  which  is  beyond  her, 
and  in  her,  the  Person  of  Jesus:  he  must  obey  her, 
but  only  so  far  as  she  is  Christ,  and  her  laws  are 


290 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


the  expression  of  His  will.  And  the  Church  ren¬ 
ders  her  service  of  protection,  control,  inspiration 
to  her  child,  hut  only  as  he  is  in  Christ,  not  as  he 
is  merely  in  her.  Thus  no  “benefit  of  clergy,”  nor 
of  laity,  can  rightly  protect  an  ill-doing  member  from 
civil  justice  for  civil  wrong;  and  all  her  mother  duty 
to  her  son  is  motived  not  by  his  worth  to  herself, 
but  his  worth  in  the  eyes  of  Christ ;  what  is  done  by 
her  to  her  children,  the  least  of  them  or  the  most, 
she  does  it  unto  Him.  That  is  how  I  conceive  the 
faith,  the  corporate  faith,  of  the  Church:  it  is  the 
triune  communion  of  Church,  member,  and  Christ; 
one  communing  with  one  both  directly  and  also 
through  the  third.  This  is  the  faith  by  which 
the  divided  brotherhoods  will  come  back  into  one 
communion  and  fellowship,  church  with  church. 

And  again  how  trite  and  conventional  and  blank 
a  saying  have  I  written  down — that  churches  can 
be  one  through  one  devotion  to  the  Person  of  Christ. 
All  the  divided  sisters  agree,  and  all  will  go  on  as 
before,  in  the  dividedness  which  we  call  the  “un- 
happy”  of  the  household  of  the  faith. 

That  may  be,  I  know  not,  if  the  saying  only  is  the 
Person  of  Christ.  My  own  saying  is  “the  Person 
of  Jesus.”  Christ  is  not  divided,  but  somewhat  the 
churches  have  divided  the  name  of  Christ,  and  it 
means  to  one  something  other  than  it  means  to  her 
sister.  They  cannot  speak  of  Jesus  with  the  same 
variance  of  meaning.  “Christ”  words  a  fact  of 
human  thinkings,  “Jesus”  words  a  fact  in  history. 


“THE  RELIGION  OF  ALL  GOOD  MEN”  291 


The  Person  of  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  the  Son 
of  Mary,  is  a  Reality,  which,  like  every  real-  the  name 
ity,  presents  itself  no  doubt  with  a  shade 
of  difference  to  every  differing  intelligence; 
but  the  substance  of  it  cannot  be  parcelled  out  at  the 
pleasure  of  those  intelligences.  Jesus  was  a  Man, 
and  of  what  man  is  we  have  all  a  knowledge  which 
is  large  enough  and  clear  enough  to  be  guide  of  life ; 
and  this  knowledge  of  Him  is  the  same  for  all  the 
churches.  In  that  knowledge  of  J esus  the  Man  they 
can  be  at  one  in  mind;  by  the  power  of  it  they  can 
be  at  one  in  will. 

It  is  here  that  reunion  must  begin.  For  there  be¬ 
gins  the  faith  of  church  as  of  churchman;  there 
begins  and  there  must  end  in  the  Author  and  Fin¬ 
isher  of  our  faith. 


CHAPTEB  XXV 


THE  HOLY  COMMUNION 


Xotiiing  has  been  done  in  nay  effort  to  commend 

my  method  of  religious  inquiry  while  one  thing 

“To  whom  remains  undone.  That  thing  is  to  show  that 

is  the  Grail  this  organum  of  research  may  he  applied  as 
served  ?” 

an  instrument  of  thought  to  the  central 
question  for  a  churchman,  the  question  which  in  the 
archaic  and  almost  uncouth  form  of  the  Church’s 
sacred  legend  ran  in  the  words,  “To  whom  is  the 
Grail  served,  and  of  what  is  it  served?”  Unless  I 
commend  my  method  this  way  the  other  advocacy 
will  go  for  nought  with  those  brethren  of  mine  who 
find  religion,  as  do  I  myself,  to  he  the  Quest  of  the 
Grail.  Will  my  theory  further  a  believer  in  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  Eucharist  and  in  its  use  ? 

But  with  what  reverent  care  must  I  approach  a 
matter  in  handling  which  I  touch  convictions  and 
loyalties  how  sacred,  soul-interests  how  beyond 
measure  dear.  Yet  I  can  hardly  much  mishandle 
this,  if  I  only  try  to  tell  my  brother  what  thoughts 
upon  this  highest  matter  come  to  clear  my  own  mind 
and  nerve  my  own  spirit,  when  I  take  my  instrument 
in  my  hand  and  go  to  inquire  into  the  Sacrament  of 

292 


THE  HOLY  COMMUNION 


293 


the  Saving  Passion,  to  contemplate  that  mystery  sub 
specie  ceteruce  vitce. 

I  then,  this  humble  seeker  of  the  Grail,  how,  if  I 
follow  my  own  rede,  do  I  think  of  the  Mystery  of 
the  Body  and  Blood  ? 

The  guide  I  have  taken  is  my  apprehension  of 
the  Incarnation  fact.  “X  am  the  life”  is  to  my  un¬ 
derstanding  the  expression  of  that  fact  by  Christ 
Himself.  He  becomes  the  life  of  men  by  a  self¬ 
interchange  of  His  spirit  with  the  man’s  spirit,  which 
in  process  and  spiritual  mechanism  is  identical  with 
the  observed  law  of  thought-transference  between 
man  and  man. 

It  is  the  Manhood  of  Jesus  which  thus 

•  •  •  The  Com- 

works  the  life  in  men.  But  this  could  not  mimicatio 
he  were  it  not  that  the  Manhood  of  Jesus  Idioma- 

tuni. 

has  itself  a  life  unto  the  Godhead  in  Him. 

In  fuller  and  more  precise  phrase  there  is  a  life  of 
Christ’s  Person  constituted  by  His  relations  to  men 
of  a  mutual  self -giving ;  this  life  is  what  we  call  His 
Manhood.  But  there  is  also  a  life  of  His  Person 
constituted  by  His  relations  of  a  mutual  self-giving 
with  the  Bather;  and  this  life  is  what  we  mean,  so 
far,  that  is,  as  a  definite  meaning  is  attainable  by 
us,  when  we  speak  of  the  Godhead  of  Christ.  The 
union  in  Christ’s  person  of  this  life  unto  God  and  the 
life  unto  man  is  called  by  the  Church  the  “taking 
of  the  Manhood  into  God,”  or  more  technically  the 
Communicatio  Idiomatum,  which  I  for  my  own  un¬ 
derstanding  translate  as  “Interchange  of  Selfhoods.” 


294 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


This  Communicatio  Idiomatum  must  not  be  con¬ 
ceived  under  the  image  of  a  logical  copulation  or 
mechanical  cohesion  or  chemical  combination  (the 
two  natures  do  not  mingle  like  water  and  wine,  as 
in  that  image  of  the  Fathers),  but  under  that  of 
the  highest  known  mode  of  existence,  Vital  Inter¬ 
change.  The  Godhead  in  Christ,  which  is  the  life 
of  Jesus  unto  the  Eternal  Father,  is  the  force  which 
works  the  self-interchange  of  the  Manhood  in  Christ, 
which  is  the  life  Jesus  lives  unto  men;  that  is, 
the  force  of  this  Godward  life  impels  and  sustains 
the  manward  life,  and  the  manward  life  is  the 
realisation  and  exercise  on  earth  of  the  Godward. 
In  simpler  and  humaner  language,  Jesus  in  such  a 
manner  loves  God  that  in  the  act  of  this  love  He 
gives  himself  to  God’s  creature,  man;  and  He  so 
loves  man  as  in  loving  him  to  exercise  and  make 
actual  the  love  he  has  to  God.  In  phrase  Himself 
has  taught  us  we  may  say  of  Him,  “Inasmuch  as 
He  does  the  act  of  love  unto  the  least  of  these  His 
brethren,  he  does  it  unto  God.” 

Atrans-  When  I  now  come  away  from  the  conse- 
lation  in  crated  dogmatic  phrase  of  theologians,  and 
human  ex-  offer  to  replace  their  Communicatio  Idio- 
penence.  matum  foy  a  formula  which  is  an  application 
of  the  natural  law,  telepathy,  am  I  darkening  our 
vision  of  the  mystery  or  throwing  light  upon  it? 
That  at  least  I  am  giving  some  feature  to  the  indis¬ 
tinct,  I  am  quite  sure.  That  the  dogma  will  thus 
come  to  the  unlearned  in  power  and  not  in  word  only, 


THE  HOLY  COMMUNION 


295 


and  become  tbe  good  band  of  our  God  upon  us,  seems 
to  me  not  too  mucb  to  hope.  There  are,  a  Greek 
told  us,  words  “which  have  hands  and  feet.”  Now 
is  Communicatio  Idiomatum  such  a  word?  Te¬ 
lepathy,  or  whatever  name  shall  better  it  some  day, 
has  some  promise  of  that  potency  with  the  simple. 
For  it  names  a  real  law  of  fact.  It  is  the  law  that 
the  thought  or  will  of  one  man  can  unify  itself 
with  thought  or  will  of  another,  without  any  dis¬ 
cernible  medium  of  intercourse.  By  this  thought- 
and  will-transference  Jesus  in  His  mortal  day  im¬ 
parted  life  to  His  contemporaries  in  the  mortal  state. 
By  the  same  I  believe  Him  in  the  first  days  of  His 
glorified  humanity  to  have  imparted  life  to  the  dis¬ 
ciples  who  survived  Him  in  the  fiesh,  and  since  then 
to  all  generations  after  them.  The  Man  Christ  J esus 
became  through  the  self-sacrifice  of  His  Passion  one 
with  the  Almighty  and  Eternal,  and  therefore  infi¬ 
nite  as  He  in  range  of  knowledge  and  of  action. 
Henceforth  He  exercises  a  divine  telepathy  upon 
every  human  consciousness  in  all  time  and  every¬ 
where  which  is  susceptible  of  a  reciprocation  in  this 
intercourse,  or  as  we  commonly  say  is  capable  of 
faith  in  Christ. 

One  who  thinks  thus  of  the  Man  Christ  Jesus 
and  of  the  life  He  gives  to  men,  what  should  he 
think  of  the  Sacrament  of  the  Body  and  Blood  of 
Christ  ? 

He  must  begin  his  thinking  there  where  Christ 
began  the  Sacrament.  Jesus  at  the  Supper  took  the 


296 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


bread,  and  said  “This  is  My  Body.”  My  brethren 
tell  me  this  could  not  be  so  when  the  words  were 
The  vital  said,  for  how  could  that  loaf  taken  up  from 
inter-  the  table  in  His  living  hand  be  His  Body 

change  ° 

interpret-  broken  for  men,  seeing  His  body  was  not  yet 
mental**1'  broken,  and  visibly  that  loaf  was  no  part  of 
doctrine  it:  hereafter  but  not  now  the  bread  would 
be  His  Body.  But  I  hold  that  the  saying  was  true 
even  then ;  the  bread  He  gave  that  evening  truly  was 
His  Body.  For  the  Body,  as  I  found  when  I  thought 
out  the  meaning  of  the  Risen  Body  (that  is  so  far 
back  that  I  may  do  well  to  repeat  it  here),  is  for 
Jesus  that  whicli  our  body  is  to  any  of  us-— that  much 
of  earthly  matter  which  becomes  the  medium  or 
instrument  of  mutual  life  between  a  man  and  a  world 
of  men.  My  body  is  the  eye,  ear,  lip,  hand,  and  foot, 
by  which  I  have  contact  and  intercourse  with  my 
world  of  other  human  beings,  by  which  I  live  a  life 
unto  them;  and  such  was  the  Body  of  Jesus  at  the 
supper  table.  Whatever  of  things  material  was  an 
instrument  of  the  intercourse  by  which  He  lived  a 
life  unto  His  disciples  was  for  that  time  and  purpose 
part  of  His  Body ;  He  was  embodied  in  it.  But  that 
“This  is  bread  was  such  an  instrument.  When  He 
My  Body.”  “This  bread  is  My  Body,”  He  caused  a 
thought  and  will  of  His  own  to  meet  a  thought  and 
will  of  a  disciple  in  the  action  of  seeing  and  touch¬ 
ing  that  piece  of  matter;  a  reciprocal  giving  of  self 
took  place  between  them  on  the  focus  of  that  earthly 
substance;  it  was  no  otherwise  than  as  when  the 


THE  HOLY  COMMUNION 


m 

physical  substance  which  is  an  eye  becomes  the 
point  at  which  two  personalities  unite  by  a  see¬ 
ing  and  a  being  seen,  or  an  ear  registers  a  vibra¬ 
tion  of  air  which  communicates  an  idea  by  the 
interacting  intelligences  of  the  speaker  and  the 
hearer. 

And  in  no  merely  metaphysical  or  logical  sense 
was  this  bread  the  Body  of  Jesus,  but  in  a  sense 
most  practical  and  real.  It  was  efficax  signum ,  it 
conveyed  a  grace,  imparted  a  life.  A  Peter  and  a 
John  who  touched  and  tasted  felt  the  heart  burn 
within  them  with  the  fire  of  that  fresh  life;  likewise 
also  burned  they  all.  The  sacrifice  of  self  which 
Jesus  was  offering  to  God — and  surely  the  declara¬ 
tion,  “This  is  My  Body  which  is  broken,  this  My 
Blood  which  is  shed,”  was  a  self-committing  act 
which  made  the  acceptance  of  the  doom  irrevocable — 
this  sacrifice  cast  its  vibration  upon  the  circle  round 
Him,  and  through  their  response  the  Christ’s  soul- 
surrender  passed  to  the  men  of  Christ,  and 
became  a  soul-surrender  in  them.  In  that  bread 
and  that  cup  they  verily  received  the  Body  and  the 
Blood,  receiving  a  life  which  was  created  between 
themselves  and  Him. 

We  to-day  receive  it  no  otherwise  than  they.  We 
in  our  Sacrament  behold  Him,  the  Breaker  of  the 
Bread  to  us,  that  it  is  He  Himself,  Jesus,  who  brake 
it  at  the  Supper.  He  is  in  heaven ;  but  as  in  heaven 
so  in  earth  is  He.  The  bread  which  we  break  is 
it  not  His  Body,  and  His  Body  in  the  same  fashion 


298 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


as  then?  It  is  an  organ  of  the  Person  of  Jesus  in 
the  glorified  Manhood  whereby  It  makes  interchange 
with  the  person  of  a  man.  The  hand  of  Jesus  at  the 
Supper  was  not  more  an  instrument  of  His  Spirit’s 
purpose  than  the  loaf  which  it  raised  from  the  board ; 
and  apart  from  that  function  it  was  not  less  a  mere 
portion  of  earth’s  dust  than  was  the  meal  kneaded 
into  that  loaf.  And  so,  at  our  own  Supper  with  the 
Lord,  upon  that  visible  substance  that  lies  on  the 
paten  there  is  directed  at  the  consecrating  moment 
the  mind  of  Christ  who  knows  the  Father  as  He  is 
known  of  Him,  with  the  will  of  Christ  that  the 
Father’s  will  be  done,  and  to  that  same  point  in 
things  visible  is  directed  the  mind  and  will  of  who¬ 
ever  draws  near  in  faith.  On  that  meeting-point 
assigned  by  the  Master  fall,  as  on  a  focus  that  gathers 
both  into  one,  the  divine  light  and  the  human  sight, 
the  beam  from  the  Manhood  infinite  and  timeless, 
and  the  strained  vision  of  a  manhood  bound  in  time. 
This  meeting  could  not  have  been  had  not  Jesus 
appointed  the  holy  tryst  by  saying,  “This  is  My 
Body.”  That  was  His  promise  that  He  would  turn 
the  light  of  His  mind  and  the  motion  of  His  will 
upon  the  earthly  elements  if  we  would  thitherward 
turn  our  own.  So  should  take  place  the  spiritual 
telepathy,  and  that  mind  come  to  be  in  us  which 
is  in  Christ  Jesus.  “Where  two  or  three  are  gathered 
together  in  My  name,  there  am  I  in  the  midst  of  you ; 
where  ye  gather  to  break  the  bread,  there  in  that 


THE  HOLY  COMMUNION 


299 


bread  am  I,  and  ye  that  eat  it  are  in  Me  and  I  in 


yon, 

This  is  the  Real  Presence.  Jesns  is  present  to 
the  worshipper  by  a  vital  union  of  thought  and 
will.  Thought  and  will  make  up  the  man. 

A  presence  more  real  of  the  Christ  to  a  pri^Te! 
man  cannot  be. 

And  need  we  much  dispute  with  our  brethren  in 
another  communion  who  maintain  that  the  Christ . 
is  present  even  in  the  perishable  fruits  of  earth  that 
lie  on  the  Holy  Board  ?  For  my  own  part  I  Holy 
can  find  the  Presence  to  be  in  these  without  Board' 
calling  in  the  doctrine  of  Transubstantiation.  There 
is  no  need  to  transmute  the  substance  from  material 
to  spiritual.  Remaining  as  they  were  created  these 
creatures  are,  in  my  understanding,  Christ’s  Flesh 
and  Blood,  not  in  figure  but  in  actuality.  For  they 
are  the  instrument  of  a  communion  of  Person  of  the 
Christ  with  person  of  worshipper,  not  less  truly  than 
was  the  loaf  which  the  Founder  of  the  feast  took 
and  brake;  and  that  loaf  (have  I  not  said  it?)  was, 
for  the  passing  moment  at  least,  as  truly  a  medium 
of  intercourse  as  the  living  hand  which  brake  it. 
Will  our  brethren  of  Rome  weigh  my  humble  inter¬ 
pretation  of  the  Presence  in  the  elements  and  judge 
whether  theirs  and  mine  are  wide  apart  ? 

And  this  also  is  the  Sacrifice  of  the  altar,  The 
which  some  affirm,  with  truth  but  miscon-  Sacrifice, 
strued  truth,  and  others  deny  but  with  a  denial  which 
their  philosophy  does  not  demand.  For  the  Sacrifice 


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THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


of  the  Eucharist  is  made  in  heaven,  hut  also  it  is 
made,  as  in  heaven  so  in  earth.  And  both  in  heaven 
and  earth  it  is  being  made — for  ever. 

Is  it  not  so  ?  Those  who  would  confute  the  Roman 
version  of  the  altar-event  do  so  by  asserting  the 
“full,  perfect,  and  sufficient  oblation,  and  satisfac¬ 
tion  for  sins”  made  by  the  death  upon  the  Cross. 
But  if  sacrifice  be  life  and  life  sacrifice,  as  my  creed 
is,  and  if  sacrifice  atones  for  sin  by  causing  life  in 
the  sinner,  then  the  sacrifice  by  which  Jesus  atones 
was  not  finished  on  the  Cross.  Had  that  been  so, 
no  sins  of  men  subsequent  to  the  death  of  Jesus 
would  have  been  taken  away, — unless  indeed  we 
should  go  back  to  old  juridical  interpretations  of  ex¬ 
istence,  and  conceive  the  Judge  of  all  the  world  as 
declaring  in  advance  the  cancellation  by  the  historic 
incident  of  the  Cross  of  men’s  later  wrong  doings. 
“Having  begun  in  the  Spirit  are  ye  now  perfected 
in  the  flesh,”  would  be  the  due  rebuke  for  this.  But 
The  we  know  the  sacrifice  of  J esus  to  be  not  the 
Perpetual  closed  event  in  history  but  an  abiding  fact. 

Sacrifice  _ 

It  is  the  life  unto  God  the  Father  which  the 
Manhood,  offered  up  on  the  Cross  in  consummation 
of  the  thirty  years’  obedience,  has  lived  and  lives  for 
evermore;  and  from  which  virtue  goes  out  evermore 
to  the  healing  of  the  nations  by  an  imparted  life 
which  beats  from  heaven  to  earth.  The  death  upon 
the  Cross  was  “full,  perfect,  and  sufficient,”  not  in 
its  operation  on  mankind  but  by  its  significance  for 
the  Person  of  Jesus  of  Hazareth  Himself.  Him  it 


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301 


atoned,  Him  in  His  mortality.  It  made  His  choice 
of  the  Father’s  will  definitive  and  past  recall;  it 
achieved  life  for  Himself,  and  so  it  perfected  sacri¬ 
fice  in  Him.  Not  yet  in  ns.  As  Paul  made  his 
sacrifice  in  the  cry,  “Lord,  what  wilt  Thou  have  me 
to  do?”  but  brought  redemption  to  his  brother  men 
by  the  stern  constancy  of  his  persecuted  ministry ;  as 
Francis  accepted  the  cross  by  his  wedding  vow  to 
Poverty,  but  wrought  his  work  in  the  Church  by  the 
lifelong  fidelity  to  the  bride;  as  some  great  soul  of 
our  times,  who  should  strip  himself  by  one  day’s  act 
of  a  wealth,  a  rank,  an  opportunity,  an  ambition  of 
genius,  to  follow  a  selfless  service  of  some  unreward¬ 
ing  cause,  could  be  fruitful  in  his  well-doing  only  by 
persisting  on  the  height  of  the  high  resolve,  so  was 
it  and  so  is  it  with  the  Master  of  all  such.  Jesus 
the  Man,  the  same  who  died  by  sacrifice  and  by  the 
sacrifice  had  life  eternal,  is  ever  making  that  sacrifice 
“full  and  perfect,”  not,  as  we  in  our  earth-narrowed 
imagination  figure  it,  by  “making  perpetual  inter¬ 
cession”  in  His  seat  at  the  throne’s  right  hand,  but 
by  the  mystic  unimageable  motions  of  His  spirit  in 
the  interchange  of  love  whereby  He  lives  unto  the 
Father.  “My  Father  worketh  hitherto  and  I  work” 
was  spoken  of  the  divine  energy  which  creates  the 
world :  it  is  to  be  spoken  also  of  the  re-creation.  As 
the  Creator  momently  upholds  His  world,  not  resting 
on  a  seventh  day,  because  heaven  and  earth  were 
made  by  a  full,  perfect,  and  sufficient  “Let  there  be,” 
so  the  Redeemer  momently  upholds  the  Church ;  and 


302 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


not  of  her  redemption  was  the  word  “It  is  finished” 
spoken  when  He  bowed  His  head  upon  the  Cross. 
Ah,  no.  In  every  beat  of  the  pulse  of  life  unutterable 
and  full  of  glory  which  is  forever  making  the  Man¬ 
hood  of  the  Christ  one  with  the  Godhead  of  the  Eter¬ 
nal,  the  Sacrifice  is  every  moment  offered  in  heaven. 
But  also  every  moment  in  earth,  where  a  soul  of  man 
is  reached  by  that  thrill  across  the  all-containing 
spiritual  ether,  by  that  going  out  from  Jesus  of  the 
virtue  which  redeems — where  a  soul  is  thus  reached 
and  responds  and  receives  the  transference  of  faith 
from  Master  to  disciple,  there  and  in  that  moment 
the  Redeeming  Sacrifice  of  Christ  is  wrought  in  earth 
as  it  is  in  heaven.  Such  a  moment  every  Eucharist 
can  be. 

How  often  comes  such  moment  except  in  the 
Eucharist,  for  those  who  seek  it  in  that  opportunity 
of  it  ?  It  comes  indeed  otherwise  and  otherwhen. 
Comes  in  some  clap  of  calamity,  some  rose-dawn  of 
joy,  comes  in  the  iron  silence  of  inward  debate, 
comes  in  the  fire  of  the  decision  which  forges  the 
iron  into  steel.  Yes,  but  these  moments  are  not 
made;  they  must  make  themselves;  how  rarely,  how 
unforeseeably !  Who  can  record  of  them  but  as  the 
Greek,  &  ru>  re\ei  oXtya/as  /cat  okiyov  xpovov  ovixfialvei 
yzpeaOcu.  Rare  and  brief  are  life’s  attainments. 

Ah,  but  not  so  is  it  with  the  Eucharist:  not 
“rarely,”  not  “for  a  brief  while”  only,  comes  the 
“attainment”  which  a  man  may  know  through  the 
mystery  of  which  Christ  planned  the  ritual.  Un- 


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303 


failing,  faithful,  punctual  as  the  seven-day  phases  of 
the  moon,  “the  faithful  witness  in  heaven,”  arrives 
the  opportunity.  The  lire  from  heaven  descends  in 
the  due  hour;  hovers  as  the  dove-wing  by  Jordan; 
and  if  the  offering  lies  in  order  on  the  altar-pyre  falls 
on  it  to  kindle  and  consume. 

Aye,  so  the  habit  of  an  ancient  imagery  has  con¬ 
strained  me  here  to  speak.  But  it  is  imagery  still, 
and  no  longer  apt,  since  a  nearer  image  has  been 
given  us.  Altar  and  victim,  wood  and  knife,  the 
outpoured  blood,  the  flesh  laid  on  the  pile,  the  fire 
put  under  or  falling  from  above,  let  us  forget  The 
them  all,  they  serve  no  longer.  Our  victim  Living 

•  .  i  i  •  *  •  p  .i  /i  i  Saciifice. 

is  not  slam,  but  is  a  living  sacrifice ;  the  fiesn 
quickens  more,  the  blood  beats  with  a  stronger  pulse 
by  the  consecration ;  the  flame  that  consummates  our 
oblation  is  fire  that  at  once  falls  from  on  high  and 
springs  from  below ;  it  is  that  energy  which  makes  all 
living  things  to  have  their  life — it  is  the  mutuality 
of  the  creature’s  will  to  live  and  the  Creator’s  will 
to  make  alive. 

Wherever  and  whenever  these  two  meet  and  make 
interchange,  there  and  then  is  celebrated  a  sacrifice 
which  saves,  whether  with  ritual  or  without  it, 
secretly  or  in  the  great  congregation.  But  how  more 
surely  is  the  human  will  drawn  to  the  place  of  sacri¬ 
fice,  and  there  empowered  to  make  the  oblation,  when 
Christ  has  named  the  place  and  defined  the  action 
“This  is  My  Body,  My  Blood.  This  do.  Whoso 
will  draw  near  to  this  altar,  he  shall  find  that  I 


304 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


am  there  in  the  midst  of  you :  whoso  will  eat  of  this 
Bread  and  drink  from  this  Cup,  he  shall  know  that 
there  enters  his  own  very  being  no  other  than  I  my¬ 
self.”  That  assigned  and  pledged  opportunity  makes 
possible  the  activity  in  the  man  which  is  the  condi¬ 
tion  of  the  act  of  God;  it  enables  the  faith  which 
enables  the  grace,  the  faith  which,  however  incon¬ 
ceivably,  must  both  prevent  and  follow  the  divine 
motion  by  which  itself  shall  be  followed  and  was  led. 

In  every  altar  rite  then,  there  is  the  sacrifice  which 
Christ  offers  for  the  sins  of  the  world;  it  is  the  fact 
that  every  priest  stands  daily  offering  it.  It  is 
The  Daily  not  the  commemoration  of  it,  hut  the  trans- 
Sacnfice.  ac^on  •  not  the  remembrance  of  the  Passion, 
but  the  experience  of  it;  in  that  one  same  moment 
the  life-act  which  is  the  communion  of  heaven  and 
earth  is  enacted  by  the  Christ  above  and  by  the 
Church  below;  it  passes  there  in  a  Godward  motion 
of  the  Christ’s  mind  and  will,  it  passes  here  in  a 
Godward  motion  of  human  minds  and  wills,  which 
is  echo  and  reverberance  of  the  Christ’s.  “I  fill 
up  on  my  part,”  said  an  apostle,  “that  which  is  lack¬ 
ing  of  the  afflictions  of  Christ.”  “We  are  filling 
up  on  our  part,”  may  priest  and  communicant  de¬ 
clare,  “that  which  is  yet  unfulfilled  of  the  sacrifice 
of  Christ.” 

But  if  our  Sacrament  is  not  a  memory  only  of 
the  Passion,  neither  is  it  a  repetition.  An  act  can¬ 
not  be  re-enacted  before  it  has  been  enacted ;  we  can- 


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305 


not  repeat  an  event  which  is  happening  only  and  has 
not  therefore  happened;  cannot  do  again  a  sacrifice 
that  has  not  once  been  done  but  is  still  a-doing.  How 
can  that  crumb  from  the  Holy  Table,  however  con¬ 
secrated  and  guarded  under  seal,  be  the  H ostia  that 
can  work  a  grace  ?  It  is  that,  while  the  life-current 
passes  through  it  between  heaven  and  earth,  by  the 
stroke  of  reciprocating  wdlls;  it  is  a  dead  thing  or 
a  nothing  when  the  current  has  past  and  left  it  earth 
of  earth  again. 

And  yet  a  grace  it  can  work,  away  from  the  altar 
and  from  the  hour  of  sacrifice;  the  grace  of  sugges¬ 
tion.  It  can  be  that  the  simple  worshipper,  lifting 
eyes  of  desire  to  what  he  deems  a  vessel  of  the  Grail, 
does  feel  the  thrill  of  the  life-current  and  is  graced. 
We  may  worship  the  Blessed  Sacrament  if  what  we 
worship  be  indeed  the  Sacrament. 

And  yet  again  the  Eucharist  is  the  aexten- 

d  .  The  “Ex- 

sion  of  the  Incarnation.”  The  Incarnation  tension  of 
is  the  taking  of  the  Manhood  into  God,  or  the  Incar- 

y  7  nation.” 

Communicatio  Idiomatum,  which  here  we 

call  the  Interchange  of  Selfhoods.  This  Communi¬ 
catio  takes  place  at  any  celebration.  For  what  hap¬ 
pens  when  a  priest  breaks  the  bread  and  gives  it  to 
other  disciples?  Is  it  not  this?  Jesus  is  making 
communion  at  once  with  the  Father  and  with  men 
His  brethren.  There  passes  between  God  and  Christ 
a  self-rendering  of  their  being  on  the  part  of  the 
Father  and  of  the  Son  as  man ;  and  there  passes  be¬ 
tween  Christ  and  men  the  like  rendering  by  both  of 


306 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


the  one  self  to  the  other.  The  two  actions  are  one. 
The  mystic  act  done  in  the  sphere  of  heaven  is  the 
force  or  energy  by  which  is  done  the  act  in  the 
sphere  of  earth;  the  transaction  at  the  visible  altar 
is  the  carrying  into  effect  npon  that  level  of  exist¬ 
ence  of  the  action  originated  in  the  Highest.  Thus 
are  welded  into  one  fact  the  two  natures  which  co¬ 
here  in  the  person  of  Christ,  the  Idioma  which  is 
the  life  He  has  unto  God,  and  the  Idioma  which  is 
the  life  He  lives  unto  men.  The  taking  of  the  Man¬ 
hood  into  God  has  realised  itself  in  the  altar  rite; 
the  celebration  at  the  altar  has  been  an  extending 
of  the  Incarnation. 

Who  is  like  unto  Jehovah  our  God, 
that  dwells  on  high, 
that  looks  so  low — 
in  heaven  and  on  earth? 

“That  looks  so  low,”  said  the  Psalmist.  In  the 
Hebrew’s  simplicities  more  than  in  the  latinities  of 
Schoolmen  is  the  word  wanted  for  me.  Jesus  that 
dwells  so  high  can  therefore  look  so  low.  His  human 
consciousness  exalted  to  infinity  and  eternity  can 
reach  to  all  of  earth:  the  divine  thought-transfer¬ 
ence  strikes  across  the  worlds  to  light  on  all  men, 
in  all  time,  in  every  place.  By  the  telepathy  of 
Spirit  He  communes  with  the  Eternal,  and  in  that 
commune’s  power  holds  communion  also  with  the 
mortal. 


CHAPTER  XXVI 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 

In  our  great  hall  there  stood  a  vacant  chair, 
Fashioned  by  Merlin  ere  he  passed  away, 

•  ••••• 

And  Merlin  called  it  “The  Siege  Perilous.” 

The  Grail  is  here  again. 

Yesterday,  my  birthday’s  eve,  I  was  pon- 

7  ”  *  7  <<rPho  TTnl xr 

i  •  i  •  .  y»  t f  ji  xii6  xioiy 

dermg  an  archaic  tancy.  it  was  the  qnes-  Thing  is 

tion  which  a  knight  who  came  to  the  Castle  her?  „ 

°  #  again.” 

of  the  Grail  should  have  asked  and  did  not 
ask.  The  Holy  Vessel  entered  the  hall,  but  he  let  it 
go  unspoken  past  his  diffident  eyes  and  arrested 
tongue;  and  so  of  “one  little  word  that  he  delayed 
to  speak  came  to  pass  such  sore  mischance  in  Greater 
Britain  that  all  the  islands  and  all  the  lands  fell 
thereby  into  much  sorrow.” 

I  woke  this  morning  to  find  a  gift  dropped  on  my 
pillow,  like  the  magic  bread  which  fell  from  “the 
Sunbright  Hand  of  the  dawn,”  at  the  side  of  adven¬ 
turers  in  the  Isle  Bountiful.  It  was  a  word  echoing 
in  my  ears  out  of  a  breaking  dream,  “the  Grail  passes ; 
question  it — Unto  whom  should  the  Grail  be  served  ?” 
If  a  knight  of  the  Quest  failed  to  ask,  how  shall 

307 


308 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


not  a  simple  student-priest  in  a  cathedral  close,  who 
is  no  knight,  if  war  and  deeds  make  knighthood? 
Yet  a  rider  on  Quest  can  any  one  he  who  will  gird 
on  the  armour  of  a  Thought,  his  own,  and  ride  abroad 
to  prove  his  armour.  Abroad,  beyond  his  pale,  not 
knowing  whither  he  shall  go  or  whom  and  what  he 
shall  meet,  except  that  he  will  go  whither  the  Vision 
draws,  veiled  and  hidden,  yet  strong  on  his  soul. 

It  was  certain  that  the  Grail  would  be  passing 
at  such  a  time  of  the  world  as  ours.  Have  I  not 
known  this,  my  own  humble  self  in  a  humble,  nar¬ 
row  experience  ?  It  has  been  in  seasons  of  sorrow  or 
of  danger,  so  few  for  me,  that  something  in  me  has 
said,  “The  Grail  is  near.”  How  should  it  be  other¬ 
wise,  if  the  sight  of  the  Cup  be  the  presence  to  us 
of  the  Passion  that  heals,  be  the 

Blessed  Vision,  blood  of  God, 

and  if  it  be  the  Presence  of  the  Incarnate  who  heals 
by  the  Passion  which  gives  life; 

I  Galahad  saw  the  Grail, 

The  Holy  Grail  descend  upon  the  shrine; 

I  saw  the  fiery  face  as  of  a  child 
That  smote  itself  into  the  bread  and  went. 

The  symbol  of  Redemption  is  the  symbol  of  In¬ 
carnation,  for  the  two  are  one  thing,  the  Coming  of 
Life.  The  older  human  legend  of  a  Grail,  old  as 
man,  the  fairy  tale  of  a  Fountain  of  Youth,  of  a 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 


309 


Food  of  divine  strength,  of  a  Weapon  that  gave 
victory — this  legend,  when  the  Church  captured  it 
where  it  ran  wild  in  heathen  woods,  and  tamed  to 
her  service,  already  carried  in  it  the  heart  of  the 
matter.  It  was  man’s  word  that  there  is  a  life 
beyond  man’s  life,  and  he  who  found  it  should  live 
indeed.  And  that  is  the  word  too  of  the  legend  after 
its  baptism  by  the  Church.  The  Grail  is  the  Pas¬ 
sion  of  Christ  that  giveth  life  unto  the  world;  the 
Passion  of  Christ  is  the  Incarnation  of  the  Son  of 
God  healing  sin:  the  Incarnation  is  the  life  of  man 
unto  God  begun,  continued,  ended  by  Jesus,  Son  of 
Man  and  Son  of  God,  Jesus  who  was  and  is  and  is 
to  be — the  Life. 

The  Quest  of  the  Grail  is  the  Will  to  Live. 

The  Grail 

How  should  the  quest  ever  be  out  of  dates  and  the 
When  should  men  go  on  quest  if  not  in  the  Live*0 
peril  or  the  pain  that  worketh  death  ?  When 
should  we  look  for  the  Grail  to  pass,  if  not  in  the 
world’s  travail  of  this  evil  day  of  battle? — battle 
again  of  Arthur’s  Britain  against  “the  heathen  of 
the  Northern  Sea.” 

But  with  these  signs  of  the  time  I  seem  to  note 
another  sign  of  a  Coming.  It  is  that  which  Merlin 
called  the  Siege  Perilous,  in  which  “no  man  could 
sit  but  he  should  lose  himself ;  and  in  which  Merlin 
himself  sat,  but  by  misadvertence  and  so  was  lost; 
but  in  which  Galahad  who  cried, 


If  I  lose  myself,  I  find  myself, 


310 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


and  the 
Vision. 


sat  down  fully  aware,  in  holy  venturousness,  and 
lo !  in  wind  and  fire  came  on  Arthur’s  hall  the  Grail, 

Venture  and  Galahad,  the  venturer,  saw. 

Venture  must  win  that  Vision,  in  Arthur’s 
Britain  and  in  ours.  But  we  have  the  ven¬ 
turers  here.  I  learned  this  last  week,  listening  to 
Constance  Merrion  when  she  spoke  of  her  work  in 
London  to  a  group  of  friends  we  gathered  for  her. 
While  this  young  woman,  sane  as  she  is  ardent,  talked, 
I  felt  in  her  a  restrained  fire  which  would  have  been 
flame,  if  there  had  been  a  little  more  oxygen  in  a 
Dunminster  drawing-room.  Afterwards,  the  guests 
gone,  we  three  sat  on  together.  In  the  releasing  spell 
of  the  magical  half-hour  under  the  cross-lights  of 
hearth  and  window,  I  learned  what  spirit  this  was  of. 
Adventure.  People  like  Constance  have  found  a  new 
boldness  in  the  face  of  an  old  enemy,  the  evil  that 
is  in  human  society  through  lust.  We  have  been  so 
timid  till  now ;  let  ourselves  be  blindfolded  to  pass  on 
our  way,  as  you  might  blindfold  a  horse  to  lead  him 
past  a  terror  at  the  roadside.  Or  if  we  did  look  at 
ghastly  facts  straight,  then  so  hopeless;  men  were 
always  like  this,  we  said;  there  is  no  use  in  taking- 
arms  against  a  sea  of  trouble,  such  as  the  evil  worked 
by  human  passions ;  we  cannot  by  opposing  end  them. 
Dam  the  sea  out  here,  it  floods  in  there;  snatch  a 
few  drowners  from  it,  what  are  they  among  so  many 
whom  the  deep  sucks  in  and  disgorges  dead  upon  the 
shore.  What  then  is  it  has  made  these  workers  so 
hopeful  to-day,  planners  of  large  things,  expecters  of 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 


311 


achievement,  marching  starkly  up  to  Castle  Mortal 
to  sound  a  challenge  on  the  slug-horn  at  the  gate? 
Whence  has  the  New  Spirit  come? 

There  never  is  any  knowing  whence  a  new  The  Spirit 
spirit  comes.  Spirit  blows  where  it  listeth,  bloweth- 
and  its  breath  is  going  to  send  more  challenges 
through  the  horn  than  this  of  Constance  and  her 
friends.  The  King  of  Castle  Mortal  has  other  ser¬ 
vants  challenging  our  champions  to  the  Drink,  the 
Lust  and  its  scourge,  sweater’s  tyranny,  master’s 
selfishness,  workman’s  selfishness,  trader’s  fraud,  and 
that  other  carnality,  disguised  to  itself  as  a  piety, 
religious  or  political,  which  has  been  bidding  the 
strong  young  man  to  say  to  his  country  when  she 
asks  for  him,  “It  is  Corban  whatsoever  thou  National 
mightest  be  profited  by  me,  the  gift  of  my-  Service* 
self  is  vowed  to  Conscience  and  to  Liberty;”  and 
suffers  him  no  longer  to  honour  by  arms  his  father 
and  his  mother,  making  that  Fifth  Word  of  God  of 
none  effect  by  your  tradition. 

Friends,  your  Conscience  and  Liberty,  in¬ 
competent  guides  with  reverend  badges,  I  warr  the 
could  wish  they  had  stood  by  me  when  lately 
I  too  talked  with  a  strong  young  man,  and  our  talk 
was  of  the  gift  of  self.  This  one  was  in  arms,  and 
going  to  the  front;  also  he  was  just  come  to  his  in¬ 
heritance.  Our  talk  was  of  the  new  opportunity  of 
service  for  such  as  he ;  patriw  sit  idoneus,  utilis  agris. 
“Yes,”  he  answered,  and  paused  “ — after  the  war.” 
For  him  it  is  now  already  “after  the  war.”  He  has 


312 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


inherited;  he  has  his  portion,  but  not  in  this  life; 
the  lot  is  fallen  unto  him  in  a  fair  ground,  fairer 
than  his  fathers’  lands. 

And  yet  have  I  said  “his  portion,  hut  not  in  this 
life”  ?  That  is  not  for  me  to  say  who  in  the  fabric 
of  my  faith  have  been  replacing  that  stone  which 
our  creed-builders  were  minded  to  set  aside,  “He 
descended  into  Hades  the  Unseen.”  If  we  have 
been,  as  Paul  saith,  in  the  likeness  of  His  Death,  we 
shall  he  also  in  the  likeness  of  His  Descent.  He 
went  into  the  Unseen,  and  behold  He  was  with  them 
all  the  days,  their  days  on  earth  and  ours.  The 
Christ  who  went  into  the  Invisible  was  not  thereby 
disinherited  of  the  Things  Visible.  Ponder  we  that 
“likeness  of  His  Descent.”  It  is  enough  for  the  dis¬ 
ciple  to  be  as  his  Master,  hut  is  it  too  much  ?  If  not, 
it  may  not  he  said  of  the  disciple  that  when  his 
breath  goes  forth  and  he  turns  to  his  earth  again, 
then  all  his  thoughts  perish.  But  man’s  thought  is 
the  man,  and  where  his  thought  is  there  is  he,  and 
dwells  among  his  own  people  still. 

Be  this  as  it  may,  and  as  we  may  one  day  come 
not  to  think  it  hut  to  know,  this  venturer,  and  the 
thousands  of  his  likes,  have  found  the  Grail,  if  ven¬ 
ture  be  sacrifice,  and  sacrifice  be  the  secret  of  life, 
and  life  has  for  its  true  image  the  Vision  of  the 
Cup. 

Yet  not  all  venture  is  the  sacrifice  that  sees  the 
Grail  and  wins  the  Life.  What  said  the  Berlin  pro¬ 
fessor  whom  Mark  met  in  the  early  eighties  ?  “Since 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 


313 


our  war  with  France  we  can  get  only  second-rate 
men  for  professors  or  teachers:  scholarship,  mathe¬ 
matics,  art,  science,  history,  it  is  all  the 
same;  all  the  best  go  away  to  commerce  or  JG°tur° 
the  army.  It  is  the  spirit  of  Adventure 
has  done  this.”  That  lure  of  glory  was  not 
the  beckoning  of  the  Grail;  no,  but  the  a wander¬ 
ing  fire”  which  leaves  its  followers  “lost  in  the  quag¬ 
mire.” 

Ah,  no;  there  is  a  losing  self  which  finds,  and  a 
losing  which  is  only  loss :  there  is  the  hero’s  venture 
which  always  prospers  and  the  gambler’s  throw 
which  is  barren  either  way.  It  is  the  self-giving  of 
Two,  the  mutual  sacrifice,  the  altar-gift  kindled  by 
fire  from  heaven,  that  is  the  venture  which  wins  life. 
He  who  sits  in  Merlin’s  Chair  not  by  self-venture 
but  only  by  misadvertence  and  not  counting  the  cost, 
only  loses  self.  He  that  dares  the  event  open-eyed, 
trusting  the  self  in  faith’s  adventure  to  the  Other 
than  self,  to  him  comes  in  the  Spirit’s  wind  and  fire 
the  Holy  Grail. 

O  soul,  but  how  shalt  thou  know,  before  thou 
choosest,  whether  thy  choice  shall  thrive  or  fail; 
whether  thy  sacrifice  will  draw  on  it  the  fire,  thy 
venture  be  victory  or  defeat  ? 

How  did  Jesus  know  when  in  Gethsem-  ^ 

The  Great- 

ane  He  made  the  venture  of  the  Cross?  estof 

He  knew  it  as  He  had  known  when  be- Venturers* 
tween  Jordan  pool  and  Jordan  bank  He  ventured 
the  doom  of  Messiah.  He  knew  it  as  when  He  lifted 


314 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 

eyes  to  heaven  over  the  dumb  man  and  cried,  “Eph- 
phatha,  Be  opened”;  or  beside  the  bier  at  Eain  com¬ 
manded,  “I  say  nnto  thee,  arise.” 

These  were  ventures  all.  How  if  by  Jordan  the 
heavens  had  not  opened,  if  by  the  Syrian  roadside 
the  dumb  had  not  found  his  tongue,  the  dead  not 
raised  himself  on  the  pillow?  How  did  Jesus  know 
this  would  he  as  He  prayed,  that  He  would  not 
stand  confounded,  a  Christ  who  could  not  save? 
How  ? 

lie  'knew  it  by  the  life  that  even  in  the  venturing 
tilled  His  veins.  There  passed  a  divine  telepathy; 
that  mind  was  in  Jesus  of  Hazareth,  which  was  also 
in  God  the  Father  of  Heaven.  The  Creator’s  thought, 
the  Almighty’s  will,  was  thought,  was  willed,  in  the 
Christ.  The  Father  that  sent  Him,  He  did  the 
works.  As  the  divine  “Let  there  be”  made  Adam  rise 
living  from  the  sod,  so  in  the  voice  of  Jesus  it  made 
the  dead  man  rise,  from  his  bed  between  them  that 
bare  him  to  a  grave. 

A  mystery.  It  cannot  he  uttered;  yet  it  can  be 
experienced;  we  can  know  the  might  of  it  though 
not  the  measure.  In  such  faint  adventures  of  the 
spirit  as  we  mortals  make,  there  is  a  knowledge  that 
the  gift  of  self  is  a  winning  not  a  waste.  We  stand 
at  some  doubtful  parting  of  the  ways,  and  we  pray 
that  the  mind  to  choose  be  in  us  which  was  in  Christ 
Jesus.  We  dare  a  choice,  and  in  the  daring  it  we 
know  that  we  have  chosen  with  Christ:  the  venture- 
act  is  such  fire  in  our  hones. 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 


315 


Yes,  and  in  the  venturing  which  is  the  act  not  of 
this  hour  and  that,  but  of  all  the  hours  of  all  a  life¬ 
time,  we  cast  our  fortune  upon  the  world  eternal; 
and  how  know  we  that  we  have  ventured  wisely  ?  By 
the  joy  and  peace  in  believing,  by  the  eternal  hope 
which  is  born  in  us  and  thrives,  by  certain  fears  in 
us  that  wither  and  are  no  more. 

“After  the  War.”  The  ventures  which  «unto 
will  call  on  us  then!  By  the  telepathy  of  whom?” 
the  divine  Manhood  we  shall  make  them  wisely  and 
well. 

“Unto  whom  should  the  Grail  he  served  ?” 

That  was  the  question  which  the  knight,  Gawain, 
in  a  faulty  reverence  forbore  to  ask  when,  in  the 
hall  of  the  Castle  of  the  Grail, 

By  his  oppressed  and  fear-surprised  eyes— 

the  Holy  Vessel  passed,  and  passed  away,  no  answer 
won  from  it,  and  therefore  “came  to  pass  sore  mis¬ 
chances  in  Greater  Britain.” 

That  is  but  an  unhandy  tale,  if  one  trusts  one 
scholar  of  the  legend,  penned  to  allegorise  the 
failure  of  Dominic,  when  on  embassy  to  the  Pope,  to 
ask  permission  for  the  Cistercian  Order  to  minister 
the  Sacraments  in  lands  under  interdict,  as  Britain 
became  in  the  reign  of  John.  Let  me  try  to  fit  the 
allegory  to  a  more  liberal  use.  Our  knights  of  the 
Grail  shall  ask,  “Unto  whom  should  he  brought  in 
Britain  and  her  Church  the  Christ  whose  Passion 


316 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


is  the  Life  of  men  ?”  They  shall  ask,  and  they  shall 
be  answered,  “The  Grail  should  be  served  to 
all  in  Britain,  and  served  to  all  the  life 

of  alL” 


Unto  all. 


i  in  the  What  are  the  “sore  mischances”  and  the 
realm  of  “much  sorrow”  from  which  Britain  can  be 
the  state.  gave(^  ^o-day,  “after  the  war,”  by  the  speak¬ 
ing  of  this  “one  little  word,”  and  the  answer  it  can 
win — “the  Grail  is  served  to  all  and  to  all  their  life”  ? 

Mischances  enough  can  be  foreseen  in  the  State 
of  Britain :  strife  renewed  of  State  and  Citizen,  Eng¬ 
land  and  Ireland,  Master  and  Man,  Manhood  and 
Womanhood.  The  Grail  is  for  the  healing  of  these. 
For  the  Grail  is  the  Mutual  Sacrifice,  the  Interchange 
of  Self,  the  Passion  that  worketh  Life. 

Of  two  mischiefs  which  can  befall  the  health  of 
the  commonweal  must  we  accept  one?  Must  either 
the  State,  as  with  the  Prussians,  enslave  the  citizen, 
or  the  citizen’s  liberty  not  to  serve  the  State  threaten 
England’s  liberty  with  enslavement  to  a  conqueror? 
Germany’s  place  in  the  world  would  be  greater  if  a 
German  had  a  greater  place  in  Germany ;  only 
service  of  England  is  the  perfect  freedom  of  her 
sons. 

Great  Britain  and  Ireland,  what  is  for  their  peace  ? 
Hot,  because  once  Ireland  bore  wrong,  now  to  crown 
Ireland  with  all  the  rights  and  load  on  Britain  all 
the  wrongs.  That  were  no  remedy,  no  more  than 
force. 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 


317 


Ulster  and  Nationalism,  what  is  their  peace  ?  Can 
you  cure  an  old  ascendency  by  a  new;  redress  the 
level  of  North  and  South  by  inverting  them,  make 
above  to  he  below  and  undermost  to  he  uppermost, 
free  one  half  a  country  by  enslaving  the  other  ?  No 
more  than  you  could  cure  Ephraim’s  envy  by  mak¬ 
ing  her  the  envy  of  Judah,  or  by  vexing  Judah  put 
Ephraim  at  ease. 

Capital  and  Labour,  will  their  peace  he  found  by 
letting  the  once  exploited  class  exploit  in  their  turn 
the  community,  and  the  workman  be  now  above  the 
law,  because  once  he  was  below  it?  We  do  not 
amend  unjust  privilege  by  unjust  privation. 

And  when  Woman  makes  offer  to  do  more  work 
and  new  work  in  the  world  beyond  the  hearth,  is  it 
well  to  say  she  shall  not  do  it  and  must  go  back  to 
the  fireside;  or  ought  we  to  search  and  see  what  new 
duties  she  can  render  and,  when  we  find  them,  render 
her  the  right  to  do  them  ? 

I  am  dealing,  it  will  he  said,  in  helpless  negative 
generalities.  Well,  the  positive  and  particular  is 
for  the  statesman  to  supply,  not  for  the  ignorant 
cloister-keeper.  No  one  makes  him  a  judge  and 
divider  in  such  matters.  Yet  he  too  may  be  wise 
enough  to  see  what  ought  not  to  be  done,  if  he  can¬ 
not  tell  the  other  what  to  do.  And  have  the  states¬ 
men  always  studied  their  problems  in  that  light  by 
which  a  cloistered  brother  may  read  them,  if  he  will, 
in  the  golden  twilight  of  the  shrine  ? 


318 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


An  answer  “Until  I  went  into  the  sanctuary  of  God : 
from  the  then  understood  I,”  said  one,  “that  which 
oracle  seat.  wag  £00  parc[  for  me.”  It  was  in  the  sanctu¬ 
ary,  it  was  before  the  altar,  and  in  the  thought  of 
its  significance,  that  another  one  came  to  see  a  further 
truth  of  the  Mutual  Sacrifice,  when  that  sacrifice  is 
a  concern  not  of  Church  hut  of  State.  Life  is  the 
self-interchange  of  two,  where  the  life  is  that  of  the 
single  living  creature;  and  it  is  still  an  interchange 
of  two  when  it  is  the  life  not  of  an  individual,  but 
of  a  society  and  its  members.  But  in  this  latter  case 
the  life  is  a  triple  interchange,  the  sacrifice  is  three¬ 
fold  ;  it  is  a  mutual  self-giving  of  society  to  member, 
and  of  each  of  these  to  the  whole  of  which  a  society 
is  a  part,  the  whole  which  we  name  according  to  our 
philosophy  God  or  the  Universe.  At  the  Communion 
of  communions,  there  are  the  three  interchanges  by 
which  the  Church  and  the  member  have  fellowship 
one  with  the  other  through  a  fellowship  of  both  with 
Christ.  By  the  light  of  this  I  discern  a  like  triune 
communion  as  the  secret  of  the  secular  existence  of 
nation  or  class.  The  community  stands  fast  or 
falls  in  the  measure  of  the  fellowship  by  which  the 
State  lives  for  the  subject’s  good,  and  the  subject 
for  the  State’s,  and  each  for  the  good  of  mankind. 
The  bane  of  our  enemy  people  at  this  time  is  two¬ 
fold,  a  gross  inequality  of  sacrifice  between  govern¬ 
ment  and  citizen,  and  a  denial  that  above  the  State 
is  a  greater  whole  to  which  sacrifice  is  due.  Heed  I  go 
further  with  examples  to  recall  my  thesis,  now  some 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 


319 


chapters  behind  me,  of  the  triune  communion  which 
is  the  foundation  law  in  politics  as  in  religion  ? 1 

But  it  is  the  Church  “after  the  war”  2.  in  the 
which  is  the  proper  study  of  the  priest.  That  Church* 
on  her  the  light  of  the  Grail  may  fall  and  be  remedy 
of  her  “mischances”  must  his  prayer  be  said.  Unto 
whom  then  within  the  Church  should  the  Grail  be 
served  ? 

It  should  be  served  to  all  and  to  all  the  life  of  all. 

Mischance  in  belief — is  there  danger  of  this? 
Yes,  Catholic  and  Liberal  well  agree  in  affirming 
danger,  though  they  expect  it  from  opposite  quar¬ 
ters,  The  salvation  of  our  faith  will  be  that  the  Grail 
be  served  to  all  and  to  all  their  life.  That  will  be 
done  if  Old  and  New,  which  to-day  are  Dogma  and 
Modernism,  resolve  their  antagonism,  and  each  find 
its  own  in  the  other  by  the  mutual  surrender  of 
what  is  only  self  in  either.  Pride  of  birth  in  an 
ancient  faith,  standing  super  antiquas  vias;  pride  of 
worth  in  a  new  knowledge,  rejoicing  to  run  its  course; 
must  discover  each  its  self  in  the  pride  of  son  in 
his  family’s  honour,  of  a  father  in  a  gallant  heir. 
The  Modernist  will  be  able  to  recognise  his  own  creed 
in  the  primitive,  when  he  realises  that  his  formula 
and  his  first  fathers’  has  no  force  and  scarce  a  mean¬ 
ing  apart  from  the  life-pulse  which  created  it  and  by 
it  is  kept  a-beat;  the  life  which  beats  between  Jesus 
and  a  soul.  The  Catholic  must  be  perfect  in  catho- 

*P.  266. 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


320 

licity,  which  means  wholeness,  and  expect  to  find  the 
catholic  truth  in  nothing  less  than  the  whole  of  time 
and  in  the  mind  of  all  the  race.  The  Grail  is  served 
to  all  time  and  all  human  kind.  But  four  first 
centuries  are  not  twenty  centuries,  nor  were  the  “all 
men”  of  Vincentes  day  really  all.  This  Catholic,  for 
an  instance,  one  which  far  back  engaged  us,  must 
discover  that  the  “personal  survival”  confessed  by 
a  Modernist  is  one  same  thing  with  a  “physical  resur¬ 
rection”  asserted  by  himself :  each  a  human  echo  di¬ 
versely  refracted  of  one  word  of  Jesus,  “Behold  Me, 
that  it  is  I  Myself.” 

And  then  our  dividedness  not  over  formulas  of 
thought  but  forms  of  practice,  over  great  questions 
of  Intercommunion  of  Churches,  lesser  questions  of 
discipline  and  confession,  little  questions  of  vestment 
and  fast.  Again  the  resolution  must  be  the  same: 
let  the  Grail  be  served  to  all.  It  can  be  served  by  a 
celebrant  in  a  chasuble  or  his  brother  in  a  surplice, 
by  a  director  of  conscience  or  by  a  “souks  friend” ;  to 
a  much  disciplined  or  a  little  dependent  flock ;  to  the 
partaker  who  observes  a  fast  or  another  accounting 
fast  or  fulness  to  be  alike.  What  matters  is  that  the 
Grail  be  served.  But  the  Grail  is  the  Cup  of  the 
Blood  of  Christ,  and  the  Bread  that  is  His  Body. 
To  thee  or  to  thy  brother  is  the  Grail  served?  To 
thee  who  fastest,  to  thee  who  hast  broken  fast?  By 
the  bare  ritual  or  by  the  rich  ?  Hay,  the  Grail  is 
served  if  thou  or  he  live  by  the  touch  of  those  holy 
things ;  so  and  no  otherwise.  Which  then  of  you  two 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 


321 


is  touched  by  the  rite  he  uses  to  the  finer  issues  and 
the  more  living?  He  is  the  better  catholic,  if  cath¬ 
olicity  be  wholeness  and  wholeness  be  life.  Follow 
then  him,  not  in  the  form  of  his  sacrament  but  in 
the  faith. 


But  one  is  ashamed  to  be  talking  of  divi- 

.  i  . ,  But  how 

sion,  where  it  means  division  only  between  of  “them 
the  faithful,  when  there  comes  in  view  the  tha5ara 

7  without  ? 


wide  estranging  gulf  which  separates  these 
faithful,  who  are  the  few,  from  those  outside  the 
faith,  who  are  the  many.  “We  are  only  working  on 
the  fringes,”  sigh  the  workers  for  the  Church  in  our 
cities.  “The  more  part  of  our  English  people  are 
not  Christian  but  heathen.”  I  should  echo  them  if  I 
thought — as  Christ  forbid  I  should  think — that  to 
be  Christian  or  heathen  means  knowledge  or  ignorance 
of  the  Church’s  system  and  use  or  disuse  of  her  insti¬ 
tutions.  Yet  how  can  I  look  on  the  scene  of  Chris¬ 
tendom  among  us,  and  echo  the  word  of  Jesus,  “To 
the  poor  the  Gospel  is  preached”  ?  Or  how  answer 
the  question,  “To  whom  is  the  Grail  served?”  with 
“The  Grail  is  served  to  all  ?” 

Yet  to  us  in  “Greater  Britain”  is  this  word  of 
salvation  spoken,  “The  Grail  must  be  served  to  all 
and  to  all  the  life  of  all.” 

It  has  not  been  done.  It  is  now  to  do.  To  all 
and  to  all  their  life. 

With  what  strange  want  of  true  perspective  do 
we  call  the  working  man  a  “heathen” — because  he 


622 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


does  not  go  to  church,  just  because  of  this.  It  is  in¬ 
deed  ill  that  he  will  not  come  there  where  to  him  the 
Grail  could  be  ministered;  not  to  the  altar,  not  even 
to  the  church  floor.  We  know  his  loss  in  this.  Yet, 
if  the  Grail  touched  him  even  there  and  in  an  hour 
of  worship,  to  what  end  would  it  touch  him?  To 
the  end  that  the  touch  might  vibrate  a  life  into  his 
veins  not  in  that  hour  only,  but  in  all  the  waking 
hours  of  all  the  seven  days.  That  life  in  him,  that 
and  not  his  church  attendances,  is  the  measure  of 
his  life  unto  God  the  Father,  and  therefore  of  his 
faith  in  Christ  the  Son.  By  that  measurement,  not 
by  the  measuring-rod  of  a  Church’s  ordinances,  the 
man  is  heathen  or  is  Christian.  The  Grail  is  served 
to  all  his  life,  or  it  is  served  in  vain. 

How  is  the  man’s  worth  measured  by  this  rule 
of  the  life  that  is  in  him?  In  other  days  none  of 
us  could  read  the  register  of  our  fellow’s  secret  life 
of  soul,  because  God  looketh  on  the  heart,  we  cannot. 
Something  is  revealed  of  it  in  a  day  of  battle  such  as 
ours,  for  life  is  sacrifice,  and  sacrifice  is  life. 

There  has  been  a  life  unto  Christ  in  the  veins  of 
our  multitude  of  which  even  human  fingers  can  count 
the  beat.  It  is  the  life  of  a  sacrifice.  “For  that  the 
leaders  took  the  lead  in  England,  for  that  the  people 
The  Grail  willingly  offered  themselves,  bless  we  the 
seen  by  Lord.”  Do  we  call  a  multitude  “heathen” 

them  that 

are  with-  who,  deaf  to  the  restraining  voices  of  certain 
prophets  of  Conscience  and  of  Freedom  not 
to  serve  the  brethren,  have  offered  themselves  to  war 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 


323 


or  work,  which  in  no  rhetoric  but  naked  truth  has 
been  a  service  under  the  Cross,  a  coining  to  the  help 
of  the  Lord  who  died  on  it,  the  help  of  the  Lord 
against  the  mighty,  whose  might  saith  it  is  the  right 
and  is  not  ? 

Hoes  not  this  sacrifice  of  the  common  people  tell 
the  Church  that  the  Grail  can  be  served  to  all  if 
only  it  be  served  to  all  the  life  of  them,  the  secular 
and  practical  as  well  as  spiritual  and  devotional? 
This  is  her  task  in  the  new  day — to  make  the  com¬ 
mon  life  of  common  men  to  he  not  heathenism  but 
a  life  unto  Christ  the  Sacrificed.  How  is  she  to  do 
the  task  ? 

The  answer  to  this  will  be  the  answer  to 

“Whereof 

the  other  question  which  the  knight  Gawain  is  the 
forbore  to  ask,  “Whereof  is  the  Grail 
served  ?” 

My  answer  must  be  that  which  has  been  the  saying 
iterated  all  along  the  pages  of  a  book  which  comes 
here  to  an  end  because  here  ends  its  quest. 

But  I  must  say  it  first  in  the  language  of  the 
legend. 

“Lo  you,  two  damsels  issue  forth  of  a  chapel, 
whereof  the  one  holdeth  in  her  hands  the  most  Holy 
Grail,  and  the  other  the  Lance  whereof  the  point 
bleedeth  thereinto/7  The  Grail  then  is  served  to 
men  from  the  Redeemer’s  Blood. 

As  I  must  for  my  own  behoof  rewrite  the  legend, 
the  Grail  is  ministered  to  all,  and  to  all  their  life 


324 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


out  of  a  power  which  is  the  Self-interchange  of  Two, 
the  Mutual  Sacrifice,  the  human-divine  telepathy, 


whereby  the  Master  is  incarnate  in  the  disciple,  and 


through  him  is  incarnate  in  his  fellows.  With  sacra¬ 
ment  or  without  sacrament,  in  spoken  word  or  in 
the  speech  of  deeds,  by  the  social  discipline  name¬ 


less  and  inscrutable  of  thoughts  which  re-think  them¬ 


selves  in  a  brother’s  mind  and  purposings,  which 


gender  in  his  will  obedience  unaware — by  these  things 


a  mission  to  the  nation.  In  this  sign,  the 
Grail,  deeper  in  significance  than  even  the 


Cross,  since  it  sets  forth  not  death,  hut  death  unto 
life,  not  sacrifice  but  the  mutual  sacrifice  between 
God  and  man,  in  this  sign  she  will  conquer.  Vexilla 
regis  prodeunt ,  and  under  them  the  little  ones  go 
forth  with  the  mighty.  Ah,  think !  Lone  weary  pas¬ 
tor,  in  the  silence  among  your  scattered  cots,  or 
drowned  fathoms  deep  under  the  deluge  of  the  city’s 
crowd,  lift  up  your  heart;  look  up  and  lift  up  your 
head.  This  is  your  power  upon  the  world  to  make  it 
live,  this  life  unto  Christ  in  your  own  bosom,  though 
it  works  faintly  in  your  hands,  and  burns  dim  on  the 
lip.  Hot  hand  nor  lip  will  do  your  deed  on  earth; 
but  the  deed  shall  be  done.  It  is  your  Self  that  will 
do  it,  your  self  in  the  interchange  of  a  man  of  Christ, 
with  Christ  the  Man,  in  the  union  which  is  mystical 
and  is  sure.  Out  of  that  self  goes  forth  in  a  view¬ 
less,  measureless  radiation  a  virtue  that  can  heal 


THE  CHAIR  OF  MERLIN 


325 


your  brother,  being  the  virtue  that  is  the  impartment 
of  life,  death’s  only  cure,  medicina  immortalitatis . 
It  is  enough  for  the  disciple  that  he  be  as  his  Master, 
but  it  is  not  too  much.  If  virtue  go  out  of  thee, 
pastor,  it  is  only  when,  moment  by  mortal  moment, 
virtue  comes  out  from  Him  to  thee  by  a  divine  radia¬ 
tion  of  the  Manhood  Glorified. 

Some  will  say  there  is  nothing  in  all  this.  My 
Telepathy  between  man  and  man  they  will  call  just 
‘‘personal  influence,”  and  have  done  with  it — as  if 
that  were  doing  anything  with  it  at  all.  The  tel¬ 
epathy  between  man  and  the  Christ  they  will  say  is 
only  the  familiar  “influence  of  an  idea.”  Will  they 
say  so?  Then  you  and  I,  brother,  who  have  not 
so  learned  Christ,  will  wish  they  may  yet  learn  Him 
as  we,  who  seem  to  know  Him  as  speaking,  not 
indeed  “face  to  face,”  but  person  to  person,  “as  a 
man  speaketh  unto  his  friend.”  Nay,  let  me  say  it 
as  would  that  saint  of  my  childhood’s  day,  to  whom 
a  boy’s  heart  went  out,  saying  of  certain  who  are 
blind  to  their  own  chief  good,  “It  is  just  ignorance ; 
they  do  not  know  that  Jesus  is  alive.” 


I  took  this  to  Langton.  Who  should  know  The  01d  to 

if  it  is  true  better  than  he  ?  He  has  read  it  the  New~ 

“Forward.” 

and  he  gave  it  back,  a  tremulous  light  in 

that  pure,  patient,  old  Tract arian  face  of  him. 

“John,”  he  said  (it  was  the  first  time  of  that),  “John, 


3  26 


THE  SURVIVAL  OF  JESUS 


I  am  a  dry  old  stick,  but  this  thought  of  yours  puts 
some  greenness  into  me.  I  often  think  over  that 
' stare  sed  ire  /  in  our  first  talks  about  this.  Poor 
me,  I  have  enough  to  do  to  stand  on  the  old.  But 
I  remember  I  said  to  you,  ‘Go  on.7  Well,  I  say  it 
still,  Go  on,  brother,  and  the  Lord  go  with  you  and 
bring  you  there.7’ 


> 


Princeton 


1 


leologica 


Seminary  Libraries 


012  01208  1933 


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